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Emerson 

Select Essays and Poems 



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,YN AND BACO 



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2nd COPY, 
1898w 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright Ko... 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



2Ei)e ScatcmD Series of ISngltsI) Classics 



^^- >r EMERSON 



Select Essays and Poems 



EDITED BY 

EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D. 

ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL, WORCESTER, MASS. 



Boston 

ALLYN AND BACON 

L 



75 /fc*it 
T3 



2L391 



COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
EVA MAKCH TAPPAN. 



m 22 1SD8 



J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 






CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

Introduction v 

ESSAYS : 

cojipensation 1 

Self-Reliance - 28 

Manners ^^ 



POEMS : 

The Snow-Stgrm . 92 

Hymn sung at the Completion of Concord Monument 93 
The Humble-Bee ........ 94 

Forbearance 



The Rhodora 
Each and All 
Forerunners 
woodnotes . 
The World-Soul 



NOTES 



96 
96 
97 
98 
100 
105 

109 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

1803-1882. 



Kalph Waldo Emerson's first appearance m literature 
was made in a letter wherein his father notes, with a some- 
what injured surprise, the fact that his three-year-old son 
"does not read very well yet," and urges the mother not to 
neglect the education of the little delinquent. Through 
his boyhood we catch glimpses of him, now "speaking 
pieces," mounted on a sugar-barrel in the village grocery; 
now toiling with the pen and with many laborious contor- 
tions of the tongue to acquire a fair and well-rounded 
handwriting; now driving his mother's cow to pasture down 
the slope of Beacon Hill; now working with his brothers 
to aid in the care of the house, dignifying the operation of 
scouring knives by composing mock-heroic rhymes, — 

" Melodious knife, and thou, harmonious sand. 
Touched by the poet scourer's rugged hand." 

Those were the days of scanty means for the brave 
little household, the widoAved mother and her five boys. 
There is a story that the aspiring poet and one of his 
brothers took turns in wearing the overcoat that was their 
joint possession, and that they read Greek in so cold a room 
that ever afterwards they associated Plato with the smell 
of woolen wraps. 

V 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

One of the strongest influences brought to bear upon the 
lives of these growing boys was that of their father's sister, 
"proud, pious, eccentric, exacting, inspiring Aunt Mary 
Moody Emerson." Full of whims and oddities she cer- 
tainly was. To test a young girl's moral courage, she once 
invited her to carry a broomstick across Boston Common. 
For many years she slept in a bed made like a cofhn. She 
prepared herself a shroud, and as if in thrifty fear that 
she would outlive its usefulness, she wore it as a dress. 
She loved her nephews so intensely that she was almost 
fierce with them in her anxiety lest they should develop 
some trait that was inconsistent with perfection. She was 
especially troubled at any manifestation of humor, — " folly," 
she called it, — and I have fancied that sometimes in Emer- 
son's writings his natural humor is kept under too rigid 
control by an unconscious deference to the mentor of his 
boyhood. She was a widely read woman, a keen reasoner, 
a brilliant thinker, and a clear-sighted critic, — a stimulus 
and inspiration to them all. "Be generous and great," — 
"Always do what you are afraid to do," — these are some 
of the mottoes that she impressed upon Emerson and his 
brothers. It is her own " Lift your aims " that comes out 
in his "Hitch your wagon to a star," and it is her "Scorn 
trifles " that helped to give to his life its calm and tranquil 
flow. 

"They were born to be educated," said this austere and 
loving aunt, and in all their privations it seems never to 
have occurred to any member of the little family that the 
boys should not go to college. So to college they went, 
partly paying their way with prizes and scholarships and 
any kind of work that came to hand. 

After graduating, Emerson assisted his older brother in 
teaching. No one seems to have remarked any incongruity 
in these two young men of eighteen and twenty opening a 



INTRODUCTION. ^^ 

" finishing school " for yonng ladies. Emerson came to his 
youth slowly, and perhaps he was younger at fifty than he 
was at eighteen. At any rate, if we may trust the memo- 
ries of his pupils, both the young ladies and their parents 
were satisfied with the success of the undertaking. After 
the school-keeping, followed the study of theology, six 
years of the ministry, and then came the time in which he 
was both teacher and minister, but to a larger audience, the 
listeners in his lecture-room and the readers of his pub- 
lished writings. 

A quiet, peaceful home he found in Concord, Massachu- 
setts; and there he thought and wrote and welcomed his 
friends. He claimed no exemption from the duties of the 
villager. He went to town-meeting like any one of the 
"plahi people." He served on the school committee with 
a never failing enthusiasm for good reading and declama- 
tion. After his conscientious visits, he would repeat to his 
family, with the utmost simplicity, how much he had learned 
from one school and another. In his description of the man 
of "royal blood," he unconsciously pictures himself in his 
unfailing kindness to every one that needed a friend. Rich 
and poor, learned and unlearned, sorrowed alike at his 
death — mansions and cottages were draped with black. 
Never, save when a man is greatly beloved, do the houses 
of the poor show signs of mourning. 

Emerson's place in the development of the literature of 
his country is not a question for these few pages. He was 
a poet, even according to his own high definition of the poet 
as the interpreter of the thought of God expressed in nature. 
He never lost the simple love of the child for the rose grow- 
ing under his window, but he felt also a reverence for its 
sacredness as a message from God that man should live m 
the present, neither grieving over the past, nor peering too 
eagerly into the future. A few months before his death, 



viii INTRODUCTION. 

he looked for a moment in silence at a beautiful rose in his 
garden, then lifted his hat gently, and said, " I take off my 
hat to it." 

Emerson felt that his thoughts came to him, and those 
who heard him lecture say that he spoke as if he were 
listening, and repeating what he had heard. To picture 
beautiful scenes, to tell thrilling stories, to imitate human 
action, to crystallize into verse his love for those that were 
dear to him, — that was not his calling; but to keep his 
soul open, his heart " at leisure from itself " to receive the 
thoughts that should come to him from above, — that was 
his high vocation. 

So it was that he was never inclined to join societies 
or parties, however much he might sympathize with their 
aims. Their work was good, but it was not his work. " No 
society can ever be so large as one man," he wrote (N. E. 
Reformers). He would make it hard for men to do wrong 
by making it easy for them to think right. Let those who 
would struggle in darkness against darkness; his work was 
to let in the light. Yet in his hands the trumpet gave 
forth no uncertain sound. His friends in the audience 
held their breath when he quietly and as a matter of course 
made his bold speeches after the murder of Love joy and the 
John Brown raid. 

But he believed that God's word comes to men directly 
as well as through the lessons of nature, that "There is 
guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall 
hear the right word" (Spiritual Laius). Man, as the re- 
cipient of direct communication from God, rose to trans- 
cendent dignity in Emerson's mind. One or another might 
have listened to the word, and so it was that he gave his 
kindly sympathy to all, ever a learner, ever ready to wel- 
come any truth that might have been revealed to the simplest 
spirit. 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

He was kept from the extremes of the " reformers " of his 
day partly by " the innate sentiment of equilibrium " whioh, 
according to "Jules Verne,'-' qualities one to walk in dan- 
gerous places, and partly by his sense of humor. He did 
not go so far as Longfellow and burlesque his own poetry, 
but he certainly did enjoy keenly a wicked little parody 
on his Brahma, and he even dared to jest at the earnest 
Brook Farmers, declaring that when they danced in the 
evening, the wooden clothes-pins rattled out of their pockets. 

Emerson never shut himself into a world of his own. He 
joyed and sorrowed intensely. His friends were to him as 
a part of himself. His love for Thoreau stood the test of a 
two years' residence in the same house. In his last days 
of feebleness, when even his own home seemed unfamiliar, 
he looked lovingly at the portrait of Carlyle and said, 
"That is my man, my good man." 

Emerson's custom was to make a note of all thoughts of 
value that came to him. These notes he used afterwards 
in his essays, so that two adjacent sentences may be many 
years apart. It is perhaps this subtle distance that some- 
times seems to permit us to think together with him, so 
slowly does he feel his way along from phrase to phrase. 
Sometimes his thoughts come to him in almost the very 
words in which he presents them to us ; sometimes it is but 
the soul of the thought that is given him, and his materiali- 
zation of it is difficult and imperfect; sometimes he seems 
trying to express a truth for which language has no adequate 
expression. No one, however, can fail to understand his 
message of good cheer : — Be yourself, rely upon God, and 
you cannot fail to be of value. 

Emerson is not one of those writers that can be labeled 
and slipped comfortably into their proper literary pigeon- 
holes. Call him a philosopher, and he flashes forth as a 
poet. Say that with him the thought is all, the expression 



X INTRODUCTION. 

naught ; and suddenly his diction becomes, as LoAvell phrases 
it, " homespun cloth of gold." Say that his thoughts find 
their best illustration in the simple village life of New 
England, and lo! he has an inspiration that only the poetry 
of the land of " roses, wine, and nightingales " will ena^ble 
him to embody. Say that his words are old and familiar, 
and presto ! he has slipped away into some fourth dimen- 
sion of the land of thought; say that they are new, and 
behold! he is but revealing to us the secrets of our own 
innermost heart. Call him poet, philosoplier, puritan, 
liberal, — what you will, — but if you have learned to 
know him, you will own with joy that a message has been 
sent to you, and that you have been at the House of the 
Interpreter. 

Eva March Tapfan. 



EMERSON. 

The Master Yankee. — John Burroughs. 

Every American has something of Emerson in him. — iJ. C. 
Stedman. 

The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find 

it. — Lowell. 

The reading of him with understanding is a mental tonic. — 
Brother Azarias. 

Here comes our brave Emerson with news from the empyrean. 

— Carlyle. 

All was known and familiar, as if I had thought or dreamed it 
a thousand times myself, and yet perfectly new, as if I were learn- 
ing it for the first i\me. — Herman Grimm. 

Emerson holds fast to happiness and ho]ye. — Mattheio Arnold. 

It was good to meet him in the wood-paths. — Hawthorne. 

Emerson was a first-rate neighbor, and one who always kept 
his fences up. — One of Emerson's neighbors. 



COMPENSATION. 



1. Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a dis- 
course on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very 
young that, on this subject, life was ahead of theology, and 
the people knew more than the preachers taught. The 
documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, 
charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay 
always before me, even in sleep ; for they are the tools in 
our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the 
street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, the greetings, the 
relations, the debts and credits, the influence of character, 
the nature and endowment of all men. ^ It seemed to me 
also that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the 
present action of the soul of this world, clean from all 
vestige of tradition; and so the heart of man might be 
bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with 
that which he knows was always and always must be, 
because it really is now. / It appeared, moreover, that if this 
doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to 
those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes re- 
vealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and 

1. Define compensation. What is the difference between the- 
ology and religion ? What are the ' ' documents from which the 
doctrine is to be drawn"? In what "might be shown men a 
ray of divinity" ? How could a belief in compensation help men 
to see eternal love ? 

V. 1 



2 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

crooked passages in our journey that would not suffer us to 
lose our way. 

2. I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a 
sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his 
orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of 
the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not 
executed in this world ; that the wicked are successful ; that 
the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and 
from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties 
in the next life. No offense appeared to be taken by the 
congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, 
when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark 
on the sermon. 

3. Yet what was the import of this teaching ? What did 
the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in 
the present life ? Was it that houses and lands, offices, 
wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, 
whilst the saints are poor and despised ; and that a com- 
pensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving 
them the like gratifications another day, — bank-stock and 
doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the 
compensation intended ; for what else ? Is it that they are 
to have leave to pray and praise ? to love and serve men ? 
Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the 
disciple would draw, was, — " We are to have such a good 
time as the sinners have now"; — or, to push it to its 
extreme import, — " You sin now ; we shall sin by-and-by ; 
we would sin now, if we could ; not being successful, we 
expect our revenge to-morrow." 

4. The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad 
are successful ; that justice is 'not done now. The blindness 

2. What was the preacher's belief in regard to compensation ? 

3. What is a fair inference from his reasoning ? 

4. What was the fallacy in his argument ? 



COMPENSATION. 6 

of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of 
the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of con- 
fronting and convicting the workl from the truth ; announc- 
ing the presence of tlie soul, the omnipotence of the will : and 
so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and 
falsehood, and summoning the dead to its present tribunal. 

5. I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the 
literary men when occasionally they treat the related topics. 
I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, 
and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. 
But men are better than this theology. Their daily life 
gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves 
the doctrine behind him in his own experience ; and all 
]nen feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demon- 
strate. For men are wiser than they know. That which 
they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said 
in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. 
If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and 
the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys 
well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, 
but his incapacity to make his own statement. 

6. I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 
record some facts that indicate the path of the law of Coni^ 
pensation ; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly 
draw the sma,llest arc of this circle. 

7. Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and cold ; 
in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and female 5 in the 
inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the 

5. Where else does E, find the same false reasoning ? Why do 
many accept it ? What contradicts it ? 

7. Define and illustrate polarity. What has it to do with the 
subject ? 



4 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

S3^stole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of 
fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal 
gravity ; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. 
Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle ; the opposite 
magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south 
attracts, the north repels. To empty here you must con- 
dense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that 
each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it 
whole ; as spirit, matter ; man, woman ; subjective, objec- 
tive ; in, out ; upper, under ; motion, rest ; j^ea, nay. 

8. Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its 
parts. The entire system of things gets represented in 
every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb 
and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a 
single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each indi- 
vidual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the 
elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. For 
example, in the animal kingdom, the physiologist has 
observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain com- 
pensation balances every gift and every defect. A surplus- 
age given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another 
part of the same creature. If the head and neck are en- 
larged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

9. The theory of the mechanic forces is another example. 
What we gain in power is lost in time ; and the converse. 
The periodic, or compensating, errors of the planets, is 
another instance. The influences of climate and soil in 
political history are another. The cold climate invigorates. 
The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or 
scorpions. 

8. Illustrate compensation in the animal and in the vegetable 
kingdom. 

9. Illustrate it in the intellect ; in mechanic forces ; in climate. 
Is it better for people to live on a barren or on a rich soil ? 



COMPENSATION. 5 

10. The same dualism underlies the nature and condition 
of man. Every excess causes a defect ; every defect an 
excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. 
Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal 
penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation 
with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of 
folly. For everything you have missed, you have gained 
something else; and for everything you gain, you lose 
something. If riches increase, they are increased that use 
them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out 
of the man what she puts into his chest ; swells the estate, 
but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and excep- 
tions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a 
level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condi- 
tion tend to equalize themselves. There is always some 
leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the 
strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same 
ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for 
society, and by temper and position a bad citizen, — a 
morose ruffian with a dash of the pirate in him? — nature 
sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are 
getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and 
love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. 
Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, 
takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her 
balance true. 

11. The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. 
But the President has paid dear for his White House. It 
has commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his 

10. Ilhistrate " Every excess causes a defect" ; what is the rem- 
edy ? What does a boy lose by having much money to spend ? 
How can he compensate himself for the loss ? What does he gain 
by having Httle ? 

11. Must a man pay for true greatness ? Must a boy pay for 



6 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspic- 
uous an appearance before the workl, he is content to eat 
dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the 
throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and perma- 
nent grandeur of genius ? Neither has this an imnumity. 
He who by force of will or of thought is great and over- 
looks thousands, has the responsibility of overlooking. With 
every influx of light, conies new danger. Has he light ? he 
must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sym- 
pathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity 
to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate 
father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the 
world loves and admires and covets ? — he must cast behind 
him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his 
truth, and become a by-word and a hissing. 

12. This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It 
will not be balked of its end in the smallest iota. It is in 
vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse 
to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt dm male administrari. 
Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist 
and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor's 
life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield 
nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries 
will not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can 
endure. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to 
elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to 

being first in athletics ? in studies ? for being a favorite ? for being 
honorable and manly ? 

12. What law is meant ? Explain : The best way to repeal a 
bad law is to execute it strictly. How does E. illustrate this ? 

How was the old law of hanging for theft "artificial " ? What con- 
nection should there be between crime and penalty ? Is the object 
of punishment prevention of crime or reform of the criminal ? Does 
imprisonment accomplish the object ? does capital punishment ? 



COMPENSATION. 7 

establish themselves with great indifferency under all varie- 
ties of circumstances. Under all governments the influence 
of character remains the same, — in Turkey and in New 
England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, 
history honestly confesses that man must have been as free 
as culture could make him. 

13. These appearances indicate the fact that the universe 
is represented in every one of its particles. Everything in 
nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything is 
made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type 
under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a run- 
ning man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, 
a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the 
main character of the type, but part for part all the details, 
all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole 
system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, trans- 
action, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every 
other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life ; of its 
good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. 
And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, 
and recite all his destiny. 

14. The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The mi- 
croscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect 
for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, 
appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eter- 
nity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. So 
do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of 
omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in 
every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe con- 
trives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, 
so is the evil ; if the afiinity, so the repulsion ; if the force, 
so the limitation. 

13. What is the main thought ? 

14. What expression is best worth remembering ? 



8 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

15. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 
That soul Avhich within us is a sentiment, outside of us is 
a law. We feel its inspirations ; out there in history we 
can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. All nature feels 
its grasp. " It is in the world, and the world was made by 
it." It is eternal, but it enacts itself in time and space. 
Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its bal- 
ance in all parts of life. Oi kv/3ol Atos del eviriTTTovai. The 
dice of Grod are always loaded. The world looks like a 
multiplication-table or a mathematical equation, which, turn 
it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you 
will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. 
Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue 
rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. 
What we call retribution, is the universal necessity by 
which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you 
see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, 
you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there 
behind. 

16. Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, inte- 
grates itself, in a twofold manner : first, in the thing, or in 
real nature ; and secondly, in the circumstance, or in ap- 
parent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. 
The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the 
soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the 
understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is 
often spread over a long time, and so does not become dis- 
tinct until after many years. The specific stripes may 

15. In how many ways does E. express the doctrine of compensa- 
tion? 

16. Define and illustrate "causal retribution" and "retribution 
in the circumstance." If there is a rule against whispering, does 
the whisperer who is not found out pay any penalty ? Is such a 
rule " arbitrary " and " artificial " ? 



COMPENSATION. 9 

follow late after the offense, but they follow because they 
accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one 
stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within 
the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and 
effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; 
for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists 
in the means, the fruit in the seed. 

17. Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to 
be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appro- 
priate ; for example, — to gratify the senses, we sever the 
pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. 
The ingenuity of man has been dedicated always to the 
solution of one problem, — how to detach the sensual sweet, 
the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral 
sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair ; that is, again, to con- 
trive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave 
it bottomless ; to get a one end, without an other end. The 
soul says, Eat ; the body would feast. The soul says. The 
man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul ; the body 
would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have dominion 
over all things to the ends of virtue ; the body would have 
the power over things to its own ends. 

18. The soul strives amain to live and work through all 
things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be 
added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The 
particular man aims to be somebody 5 to set up for himself; 
to truck and higgle for a private good ; and, in particulars, 
to ride, that he may ride ; to dress, that he may be dressed ; 
to eat, that he may eat ; and to govern, that he may be seen. 
Men seek to be great; they would have ofiices, wealth, 

17. Explain : We seek to act partially. How may a difficult 
thing be good for one's character ? Is pleasure good ? Ought 
one to avoid it or to pursue it ? 

18. How is the soul " the only fact " ? 



10 SELECTIONS FEOM EMERSON. 

power, and fame. They tliiuk that to be great is to get only 
one side of nature — the sweet, without the other side — 
the bitter. 

19. Steadily is this dividing and detaching counteracted. 
Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the 
smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our 
hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out 
of profitable things, power out of strong things, the mo- 
ment we seek to separate them from the whole. We can 
no more halve things and get the sensual good by itself, 
than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a 
light without a shadow. " Drive out nature with a fork, 
she comes running back." 

20. Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which 
the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that 
he does not know, brags that they do not touch him ; — but 
the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he 
escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more 
vital part. If he had escaped them in form and in the ap- 
pearance, it is that he has resisted his life, and fled from 
himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is 
the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the 
good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried 
— since to try it is to be mad — but for the circumstance, 
that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion and 
separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man 
ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see tlie 
sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual 
hurt ; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the' dragon's 

19. What is the mam thought ? How does E. prevent the repe- 
tition of this thought from being tiresome ? What is the difference 
between sensual and sensuous ? 

20. If one must pay tlie penalty for every wrong, why do people 
ever do wrong ? 



COMPENSA TION. 1 1 



tail ; and thinks he can cut off that which he Avouid have, 
from that which he would not have. " How secret art thou 
who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, thou only 
great God, sprinkling with an unwearied Providence certain 
penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires ! " 

21. The human soul is true to these facts in the painting 
of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. 
It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks 
called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally 
ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made 
amends to reason, by tying up the hands of so bad a god. 
He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus 
knows one secret, which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, 
another. He cannot get his own thunders ; Minerva keeps 
the key of them. 

" Of all the gods I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
His thunders sleep." 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its 
moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics ; 
and indeed it would seem impossible for any fable to be in- 
vented and get any currency which was not moral. Aurora 
forgot to ask youth for her lover, and so though Tithonus is 
immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable ; for 
Thetis held him by the heel when she dipped him in the 
Styx, and the sacred waters did not wash that part. Sieg- 
fried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf 
fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's blood, 
and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it always 
is. There is a crack in everything God has made. Always, 

21. Why were the Greeks reasonable in representing Jupiter as 
helpless? Why did they excuse him for wrong-doing? What 
does the "in-working of the All" mean? Cf. 14. Explain E.'s 



12 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

it would seem, there is this vindictive circumstance stealing 
in at unawares, even into the wild poesy in wliich the 
human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake 
itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of 
the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in Nature, 
nothing can be given, all things are sold. 

22. This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps 
watch in the universe, and lets no offense go unchastised. 
The Furies, they said, are attendants on Justice, and if the 
sun in heaven should transgress his path, they would punish 
him. The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, 
and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the 
wrongs of their owners ; that the belt which Ajax gave 
Hector, dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels 
of the car of Achilles ; and the sword which Hector gave 
Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded 
that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theogenes, a 
victor in the games, one of his rivals went to it by night, 
and endeavored to throw it down by repeated blows, until 
at last he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to 
death beneath its fall. 

23. This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It 
came from thought above the will of the writer. That is 
the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. 
That is the best part of each which he does not know, that 
which flowed out of his constitution, and not from his too 

statement that a fable must be "moral." What is the moral in 
any one of Shakespeare's plays that you have read ? Should you 
wish the play to end differently ? Why ? Does " a crack in every- 
thing ' ' mean imperfection or perfection ? 

22. Express in one word the "ancient doctrine of Nemesis." 
What has this story of the belt and the sword to do with the doctrine 
of compensation ? 

23. Why does E. think there is "somewhat divine" in fable? 
What advantage is there in stating a law in the form of a fable ? 



COMPENSA TION. 1 3 

active invention ; tliat which in the study of a single artist 
yon might not easily find, but in the study of many, you 
would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, 
but the work of man in that early Hellenic world, that I 
would know. The name and circumstances of Phidias, 
however convenient for history, embarrasses when we come 
to the highest criticism. We are to see that which man was 
tending to do in a given period, and was hindered, or, if 
you wdll, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of 
Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man 
at the moment wrought. 

24. Still more striking is the expression of this fact in 
the proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature 
of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without 
qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each 
nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which 
the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow 
the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say 
in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws 
which the pulpit, the senate, and the college deny, is hourly 
preached in all markets and all languages by flights of 
proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as 
that of birds and flies. 

25. All things are double, one against another. — Tit for 
tat ; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for blood ; 
measure for measure ; love for love. — Give and it shall be 
given you. — He that watereth shall be watered himself. — 
What will you have ? quoth God ; pay for it and take it. — 
Nothing venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly 
for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — Who doth not 

24. Which definition of proverbs do you prefer ? Ought proverbs 
to be accepted without qualification ? Illustrate. 

25. In how many ways has E. expressed the thought of this para- 
graph in preceding paragraph ? Of what books has he shown 



14 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses 
always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. — 
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end 
fastens itself around your own. — Bad counsel confounds 
the adviser. — The devil is an ass. 

26. It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our will by 
the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from 
the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible 
magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. 

27. A man cannot speak but he judges himself. AVith 
his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye 
of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on 
him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but 
the other end remains in the throw^er's bag. Or, rather, it 
is a harpoon thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a 
coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or 
not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in 
twain, or to sink the boat. 

28. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. " No 
man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," 
said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see 
that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to 
appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see 
that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to 

knowledge ? Is this true : What will you have ? Pay for it and 
take it. 

Illustrate: "Give and it shall be given you." What are the 

most valuable things a boy can give ? 

27. Illustrate the main statement. Can an opinion "react" on 
one if he does not utter it ? 

28. What may a company of young people lose if they shut others 
out of their circle ? Do they gain anything ? Is it better to be 
kind from a selfish motive or not to be kind ? What would be the 
effect in each case on us and on the other person ? 



COMPEN SA TION. 1 5 

shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and 
you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their 
heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would make 
thnigs of all persons ; of women, of children, of the poor. 
The vulgar proverb, " I will get it from his purse or get it 
from his skin," is sound philosophy. 

29. All infractions of love and equity in our social rela- 
tions are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. 
Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I 
have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water 
meets water, or a current of air meets another, with perfect 
diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as 
there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at half- 
ness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor 
feels the wrong ; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk 
from him ; his eyes no longer seek mine ; there is war between 
us ; there is hate in him and fear in me. 

30. All the old abuses in society, the great and universal 
and the petty and particular, all unjust accumulations of 
property and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear 
is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revo- 
lutions. One thing he always teaches, that there is rotten- 
ness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and though 
you see not well what he hovers for, there is death some- 
where. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cul- 
tivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and 
mowed and gibbered over government and property. That 
obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great 
wrongs which must be revised. 

29. How does a boy feel when he meets another whom he has 
injured ? Which is the more uncomfortable ? If the injurer is 
"punished by fear," does this mean that lie is afraid of the other 
boy? 

30. What is the main thought ? 



16 SELECTIONS FBOM EMERSON. 

31. Of tlie like nature is that expectation of change which 
instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity. 
The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of Polycrates, the 
awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous 
soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vi- 
carious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice 
through the heart and mind of man. 

32. Experienced men of the world know very well that 
it is always best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and 
that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The bor- 
rower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained anything 
who has received a hundred favors and rendered none ? 
Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, 
his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money ? There arises on 
the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one 
part, and of debt on the other ; that is, of superiority and 
inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory of 
himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction alters, 
according to its nature, their relation to each other. He 
may soon come to see that he had better have broken his 
own bones than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and 
that "the highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask 
for it." 

33. A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of 
life, and know that it is always the part of prudence to face 
every claimant, and pay every just demand on your time, 
your talents, or your heart. Always pay ; for, first or last, 
you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may 

31. What is the main thought ? 

32. Does the pupil who forgets his pencil lose anything in borrow- 
ing one ? Does the lender gain or lose morally ? Is the last sen- 
tence true ? Ought we never to ask a favor ? 

33. Why cannot some one else pay your debt to others of time, or 
talent, or kindness? What "tax is levied" on talent, education, 



COMPENSA TION. 1 7 

stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a 
postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If 
you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads 
you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for 
every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is 
great who confers the most benefits. He is base, — and 
that is the one base thing in the universe, — to receive 
favors and render none. In the order of nature we cannot 
render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only 
seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, 
line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Be- 
ware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast 
corrupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some 
sort. 

34. Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we 
buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application 
of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your 
land a skillful gardener, or to buy good sense -applied to gar- 
dening; in your sailor, good sense apj^lied to navigation; in 
the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; 
in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. 
So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself 
throughout your estate. But because of the dual constitu- 
tion of all things, in labor as in life there can be no cheat- 
popularity ? What makes a man great ? What makes a boy 
great ? If a person has shown us kindness, how do we repay it 
in being kind to some one else '? Can we be blamed if we are 
merely just to others ? 

34. Why is cheap labor dear ? AVhy is cheap study ? Why do 
we pay so much for a bit of steel in a watch-spring ? Why do we 
pay the captain more than the sailor ? What does the thief steal 
from himself ? If a boy gains nothing from his study but ability to 
pass examinations, what does he lose ? If you pay a man for good 
work and he gives you poor, is there any way by which you may gain 
c 



18 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

ing. The thief steals from himself/ The swindler swindles 
himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and vir- 
tue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like 
paper-money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which 
they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be 
counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be 
answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedi- 
ence to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gam- 
bler cannot extort the benefit, cannot extort the knowledge 
of material and moral nature which his honest care and 
pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is. Do the 
thing, and you shall have the power : but they who do not 
the thing have not the power. 

35. Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpen- 
ing of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one 
immense illustration of the perfect compensation of the uni- 
verse. Everywhere and always this law is sublime. The 
absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every- 
thing has its price, and if that price is not paid, not that 
thing but something else is obtained; and that it is impossi- 
ble to get anything without its price, — this doctrine is not 
less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets 
of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action 
and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high 
laws which each man sees ever implicated in those processes 
Avith which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle 
on his chisel edge, which are measured out by his plumb 
and foot rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the 
shop bill as in the history of a state, — do recommend to 

from the loss ? If the good workman is poorly paid, can he gain 
anything from the loss ? What is nature's law of labor ? Does 
this apply to work done by machinery ? 

35. How may a man's business appeal to his imagination ? Does 
algebra, science, a foreign language ? 



COMPENSA TION. 1 9 

him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business 
to his imagination. 

36. The league between virtue and nature engages all 
things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws 
and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. 
He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but 
there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. There is 
no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the 
earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if 
a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the 
woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel 
and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you can- 
not wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, 
so as to leave no inlet or clew. Always some damning cir- 
cumstance transpires. The laws and substances of nature 
— water, snow, wind, gravitation — become penalties to the 
thief. 

37. On the other hand, the law holds with equal sure- 
ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. 
All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides 
of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute 
good, which like fire turns everything to its own nature, 
so that you cannot do him any harm', but as the royal 
armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached, cast 
down their colors and from enemies became friends, so 
do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offense, poverty, 
prove benefactors. 

" Winds blow and waters roll 
Strength to the brave, and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing." , 

36. Tell what the main thought has to do with compensation. 

37. What may a boy gain from losing a race ? Can he gain any- 
thing if he has no chance to run another ? 



20 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

38. The good are befriended even by weakness and de- 
fect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not 
injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not 
somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable ad- 
mired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter 
came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the 
thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his life- 
time needs to thank his faults. -As no man thoroughly 
understands a truth until first he has contended against it, 
so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances 
or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and 
seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the 
same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in 
society ? Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone, 
and acquire habits of self-help ; and thus, like the wounded 
oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. 

39. Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not until 
we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awakens the 
indignation which arms itself with secret forces. A great 
man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the 
cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is 
pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn some- 
thing; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he 
has gained facts ; learns his ignorance ; is cured of the in- 
sanity of conceit ; has got moderation and real skill. The 
wise man always throws himself on the side of his assail- 
ants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his 
weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him 
like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo ! he has 
passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate 
to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said 

38. How may a man's pride injure him and his defects help him ? 

39. Explain : "The wise man always throws himself on the side of 
his assailants." Can a great man be little ? ; 



COMPENSATION. 21 

is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. 
But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, 
I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. In 
general, every evil to which we do not succumb, is a bene- 
factor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength 
and valor of the enemy he kills, passes into himself, so we 
gain the strength of the temptation we resist. 

40. The same guards which protect us from disaster, de- 
fect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness and 
fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, 
nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer 
all their life long under the foolish superstition that they 
can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be 
cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be, and 
not to be, at the same time. There is a third silent party 
to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes 
on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, 
so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an 
ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your 
debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the pay- 
ment is withholden, the better for you ; for compound in- 
terest on compoimd interest is the rate and usage of this 
exchequer. 

41. The history of persecution is a history of endeavors 
to cheat nature, to make water runup hill, to twist a rope 
of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many 
or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies vol- 
untarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing its 

40. How only may a man be cheated? What is the "third 
silent party to all our bargains " ? How is a man paid for serving 
well an ungrateful master ? How does the master lose by his in- 
gratitude ? 

41. How does persecution try to cheat nature ? Give E.'s idea 
of a mob. Who are most injured by "mob law " ? 



22 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nat- 
ure of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its 
actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes 
a principle ; it would whip a right ; it would tar and feather 
justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and 
persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank 
of boys who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy au- 
rora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their 
spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dis- 
honored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every 
prison a more illustrious abode ; every burned book or house 
enlightens the world ; every suppressed or expunged word 
reverberates through the earth from side to side. The 
minds of men are at last aroused ; reason looks out and 
justifies her own, and malice finds all her work vain. It is 
the whipper who is whipped, and the tyrant who is undone. 

42. Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circum- 
stances. The man is all. Everything has two sides, a 
good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to 
be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the 
doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing 
these representations, — What boots it to do well ? there is 
one event to good and evil ; if I gain any good, I must pay 
for it ; if I lose any good, I gain some other ; all actions 
are indifferent. 

43. There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, 
to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but 
a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circum- 
stance, Avhose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies 
the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is 

42. Why is the thoughtless interpretation of compensation wrong ? 

43. Explain : " The soul is," If falsehood can do no real harm, 
is falsehood as good as truth ? Is it the same thing to avoid wrong 
as to do right ? Illustrate. 



COMPENSATION. 23 

not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast 
affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallow- 
ing up all relations, parts, and times, within itself. Nature, 
truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the ab- 
sence or departure of the same. Nothing, falsehood, may 
indeed stand as the great night or shade, on which, as a 
background, the living universe paints itself forth ; but no 
fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work ; for it is not. It 
cannot work any good; it cannot Avork any harm. It is 
harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. 

44. We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, 
because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy, 
and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in 
visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his 
nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore out- 
witted the law ? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and 
the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. In some 
manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the 
understanding also ; but should we not see it, this deadly 
deduction makes square the eternal account. 

45. Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the 
gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no 
penalty to virtue ; no penalty to Avisdom ; they are proper 
additions of being. In a virtuous action, I properly am ; 
in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts 
conquered from chaos and nothing, and see the darkness 
receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no 
excess to love ; none to knoAvledge ; none to beauty ; when 

44. If a criminal is not caught, does he escape punishment ? Cf . 16. 
Why do we feel defrauded if he is not caught ? Why does a crimi- 
nal sometimes give himself up ? 

45. If rectitude is not "bought by any loss," do we pay anything 
for it? Explain: "In a virtuous action, I properly am." Cf. 43, 
"The soul is." What does a good act add to the world ? 



24 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The 
soul refuses all limits. It affirms in man always an opti- 
mism, never a pessimism. 

46. His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct 
is trust. Our instinct uses " more " and " less " in applica- 
tion to man, always of the 'presence of the soul, and not of its 
absence; the brave man is greater than the coward; the 
true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, 
than the fool and knave. There is, therefore, no tax on the 
good of virtue ; for that is the incoming of God himself, or 
absolute existence without any comparative. All external 
good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has 
no root in me, and the next wind will blow it away. But 
all good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for 
in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart 
and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do 
not earn, for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing 
that it brings with it new responsibility. I do not wish 
more external goods, — neither possessions, nor honors, nor 
powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent ; the tax is cer- 
tain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that the com- 
pensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up 
treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I 
contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the 
wisdom of St. Bernard, ^'Nothing can work me damage 
except myself ; the harm that I sustain, I carry about with 
me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault." 

46. How is a brave man greater than a coward? Is it ever 
brave to avoid danger ? How does E. express the thonght, " What 
costs nothing is worth nothing" ? What just tax is there on the 
man who has found a pot of gold ? on the man who has received 
an education? on the man who can influence others? Define 
responsibility. Was E.'s life consistent with his words, "I do not 
wish more external goods," etc. ? Is it any loss to us to wish for 
good things that we do not earn ? 



COMPENSATION. 25 

47. In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the 
inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature 
seems to be the distinction of More and Less. How can 
Less not feel the pain ; how not feel indignation or malevo- 
lence towards More ? Look at those who have less faculty, 
and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. 
Almost he shuns their eye; almost he fears they will up- 
braid God. What should they do? It seems a great injus- 
tice. But face the facts, and see them nearly, and these 
mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them all, as 
the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of 
all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. 
His is mine. I am my brother and my brother is me. If I 
feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can 
yet love ; I can still receive ; and he that loveth, maketh 
his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the dis- 
covery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with 
the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and 
envied, is my own. It is the eternal nature of the soul to 
appropriate and make all things its own. Jesus and Shake- 
speare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and 
incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, 
— is not that mine ? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, 
it is not wit. 

48. Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of 

47. How can we avoid envy of those having more than we ? How 
avoid a half scornful pity of those having less ? What can we do 
for those that have more ? for those that have less ? Which is true, 
"I am my brother's keeper" or "I am my brother"? What is 
meant by the soul's appropriating all things ? Is it a loss to us not 
to "appropriate" Shakespeare? Can we "appropriate" Shake- 
speare without studying his words? How can we "appropriate" 
Jesus ? 

48. Why do not changes in the prosperity of men always help 



26 SELECTIONS FBOM EMERSON. 

men, are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. 
Evermore it is the order of nature to grow, and every soul 
is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of 
things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the 
shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because 
it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new 
house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these 
revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they 
are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely 
about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid mem- 
brane through which the form is always seen, and not as in 
most men an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, 
and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. 
Then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day 
scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should 
be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off 
of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment 
day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, resting, not 
advancing, resisting, not co-operating with the divine expan- 
sion, this growth comes by shocks. 

49. We cannot ])art with our friends. AVe cannot let our 
angels go. We do not see that they only go out that arch- 
angels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do 
not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity 
and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in 
to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yesterday. We 
linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread 
and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, 

them? Is it weh that "the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the 
man of yesterday " ? Explain " putting off of dead circumstances." 
49. Explain : "We are idolaters of the old." Why do we wish 
for friends ? Why do we like to remember pleasant things that are 
past ? Why do we grieve over what is past ? How do we hear 
" the voice of the Almighty " in nature ? 



COMPENSATION. 27 

cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so 
dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. 
The voice of the Almighty saith, " Up and onward forever- 
more I " We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we 
rely on the New ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, 
like those monsters who look backwards. 

50. And yet the cojnpensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of 
time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss 
of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid 
loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep 
remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a 
dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but 
jjrivation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or 
genius ; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was 
waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a 
household, or style of living, and allows the formation of 
new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It per- 
mits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and 
the reception of new influences that prove of the first im- 
portance to the next years ; and the man or woman who 
would have remained a sunny garden flower with no room 
for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the 
falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made 
the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide 
neighborhoods of men. 

50. Why not remain the " sunny garden flower" ? What does 
E. think is the greatest thing a man may possess ? the greatest thing 
a man can do ? What new, practical thoughts have you found in 
this essay ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 



1. I READ the other day some verses written by an emi- 
nent painter which Avere original and not conventional. 
Always the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the 
subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of 
more value than any thought they may contain. To believe 
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in 
your private heart, is true for all men, — that is genius. 
Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal 
sense ; for always the inmost becomes the outmost, — and 
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of 
the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is 
to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and 
Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and 
spoke not what men, but what they, thought. A man 
should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which 
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre 
of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses 
without notice his thought, because it is his. In every 
work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts : 

1. What makes a poem conventional ? Is Longfellow's Psalm 
of Life conventional or original ? What is the difference between 
sentiment and thought ? What is a "latent conviction " ? What 
thought do you find in any play of Shakespeare's that seems stronger 
and clearer than before you read the play ? Does E, mean that we 
should always express our opinions ? 

28 



8EL F-EELIA NCE. 29 

tliey come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. 
Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us 
than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous im- 
pression Avith good-humored inflexibility then most when 
the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-mor- 
row a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely 
what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be 
forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. 

2. There is a time in every man's education when he ar- 
rives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imita- 
tion is suicide ; that he must take himself for better, for 
worse, as his portion ; that though the wide universe is full 
of good, no kernel of nourishing icorii can come to him but 
through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is 
given to him to till. The power whi^h resides in him is 
new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which 
he can do ; nor does he know until he has tried. Not for 
nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much im- 
pression on him, and another none. It is not without pre- 
established harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye 
was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify 
of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost 
syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, 
and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us repre- 
sents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good 
issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his 
work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when 
he has put his heart into his work and done his best ; but 
what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. 

2. "Envy is ignorance" of what? How does E. express the 
idea of one's own ability ? Does a "commonplace person " possess 
any power that is " new in nature " ? What comfort can you find 
if you fail in a lesson that you have tried your best to learn ? 



30 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt 
his genius deserts him ; no muse befriends ; no invention, 
no hope. 

3. Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you ; 
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. 
Great men have always done so and confided themselves 
childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their percep- 
tion that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working 
through their hands, predominating in all their being. And 
we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the 
same transcendent destiny ; and not pinched in a corner, 
not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and 
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under 
the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance on Chaos 
and the Dark. 

4. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in 
the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. 
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment 
because arithmetic has computed the strength and means 
opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being 
whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look 
in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to 
nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly 
makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to 
it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no 
less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable 
and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand 

3. Does one fail to accept his place if lie tries to improve it ? 
Explain the second sentence. 

4. Wliat does E. mean by a child's mind "being whole''? 
Could a grown person's mind be "whole " ? May a mind that is 
"whole" have more than one aim? 
boy can have ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 31 

by itself. Do not think the youth has no force because he 
cannot speak to you and me. Hark ! in the next room, who 
spoke so clear and emphatic ? Good Heaven ! it is he ! it 
is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for 
weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by, that 
now rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he 
knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, 
then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 
5. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to con- 
ciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. How 
is a boy the master of society! — independent, irresponsible, 
looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass 
by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift 
summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, elo- 
quent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about con- 
sequences, about interests : he gives an independent, genuine 
verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. But 
the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. 
As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a 
committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred 
of hundreds whose affections must now enter into his ac- 
count. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass 
again into his neutral, godlike independence! Who can 
thus lose all pledge, and having observed, observe again 
from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted 
innocence, must always be formidable, must always engage 
the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal 
youth the force would be felt. He would utter opinions on 

5. What does E. mean by doing "aught to concihate"? Is 
courtesy an attempt to "concihate" ? Should one never think of 
consequences before acting ? Has one a right to do an act tliat 
harms himself alone? How does E. express tlie thought, "Look 
out on a subject, not down " ? What are " necessary " opinions ? 



32 SELECTIONS FB03I EMERSON. 

all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but 
necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and 
put them in fear. 

6. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 
they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of 
every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company 
in which the members agree, for the better securing of his 
bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and cult- 
are of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. 
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and crea- 
tors, but names and customs. 

7. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He 
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by 
the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. 
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. 
Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of 
the world. I remember an answer which when quite young 
I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont 
to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. 
On my saying, " What have I to do with the sacredness of 
traditions, if I live wholly from within ? " ray friend sug- 
gested — "But these impulses may be from below, not from 
above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; 
but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." 
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good 
and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or 
this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the 

6. Would one necessarily be made better by living alone ? What 
kind of liberty does one give up in society ? What does one gain ? 
Are conformity and politeness the same ? 

7. Are there any customs in school-life to which the '-true'' pupi! 
must refuse to conform ? What is meant by : " Absolve you to your- 
self '' ? Ought we to care for the opinion of others ? Why is E. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 33 

only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself 
in the presence of all opposition as if everything were titu- 
lar and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how 
easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies 
and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken indi- 
vidual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to 
go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. 
If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall 
that pass ? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause 
of abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Bar- 
bados, why should I not say to him, " Go love thy infant ; 
love thy wood-chopper ; be good-natured and modest; have 
that grace ; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambi- 
tion with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand 
miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Kough and 
graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer 
than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some 
edge to it, else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be 
preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when 
that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife 
and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on 
the lintels of the door-post, Wliim. I hope it is somewhat 
better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in 
explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or 
why I exclude company-. Then, again, do not tell me, as a 
good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men 
in good situations. Are they my poor ? I tell thee, thou 
foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the 
cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom 

so severe on the "angry bigot" ? From what motives do people 
give to beggars ? Would all beggars "belong" to E.-? Would 
any? Is this paragraph inconsistent with Compensation, 47, "I 
am my brother," etc.? What is the strongest claim for help that 
any one can have on us ? 

T) 



34 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

I do not belong. There is a class of j^ersons to whom by all 
spiritual affinity I am bonght and sold; for them I will go 
to prison, if need be ; but your miscellaneous popular chari- 
ties ; the education at college of fools ; the building of meet- 
ing-houses to the vain end to which many now stand ; alms 
to sots; and the thousandfold relief societies; — though I 
confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dol- 
lar, it is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by I shall have the 
manhood to withhold. 

8. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep- 
tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men 
do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or 
charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily 
non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an 
apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as in- 
valids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are 
penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life 
is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a 
spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, 
so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering 
and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to 
need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique ; it should 
be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. 1 ask primary 
evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from 
the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no 
difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are 
reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege 
where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts 
may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance 
or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. 

8. From what motives might a boy be liberal without being at heart 
generous ? Is such liberality of value to him '? Does E. mean 
that it makes no difference whether our actions are excellent or 
not? 



SELF-EELIANCE. 35 

9. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the 
people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in 
intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between 
greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will 
always find those who think they know what is your duty 
better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live 
after the world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after 
our own; bat the great man is he who in the midst of the 
crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of 
solitude. 

10. The objection to conforming to usages that have be- 
come dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses 
your time and blurs the impression of your character. If 
you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible- 
society, vote with a great party either for the government 
or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — 
under all these screens, I have difficulty to detect the pre- 
cise man you are. And, of course, so much force is with- 
drawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I 
shall know you. Do your work, and you shall re-enforce 
yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's-buff is 
this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate 
your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text 
and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his 
church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can 
he say a new and spontaneous word ? Do I not know that, 
with all this ostentation of exauiining the grounds of the 
institution, he will do no such thing ? Do I not know that 

9. Learn the last sentence. Why is such a man great ? 

10. Did it scatter Washington's force to own slaves ? How 
would it have affected Lincoln's iniiuence ? Is it impossible for 
a man to "say a new and spontaneous word" on doctrines that he 
is bound to uphold? Can one be "bound" to uphold anything? 
What shall we do if a conversation does not interest us ? 



36 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the per- 
mitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister ? He is 
a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the 
emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their 
eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached them- 
selves to some one of these communities of opinion. This 
conformity makes them not false in a fcAv particulars, authors 
of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth 
is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four 
not the real four ; so that every word they say chagrins us, 
and we know not where to begin to set them right. Mean- 
time nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform 
of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut 
of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asi- 
nine expression. There is a mortifying experience in partic- 
ular which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general 
history; I mean, "the foolish face of praise," the forced 
smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at 
ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. 
The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low 
usurping willfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face 
and make the most disagreeable sensation, a sensation of 
rebuke and warning which no brave young man will suffer 
twice. 

11. For nonconformity the Avorld whips you with its dis- 
pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate 
a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the pub- 
lic street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had 
its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might 
well go home with a sad countenance ; but the sour faces of 
the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, 

11. Why may a man be comforted when he meets much criticism ? 
How can one establish a "habit of magnanimity''? Cf. Compensa- 
tion^ 40, "The longer the payment is withholden," etc. 



SELF-BELIANCE. B7 

disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, 
and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the mul- 
titude more formidable than that of the senate and the col- 
lege. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the 
world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their 
rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being 
very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine 
rage the indignation of the people is added, when the igno- 
rant and poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force 
that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, 
it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it 
godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 

12. The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word, because 
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit 
than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. 

13. But why should you keep your head over your 
shoulder ? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your 
memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in 
this or that public place ? Suppose you should contradict 
yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom 
never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts 
of pure memory, but bring the past for judgment into the 
thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust 
your emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied per- 
sonality to the Deity : yet when the devout motions of the 
soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should 
clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as 
Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 



12. Why are people afraid of seeming inconsistent ? 

13. How does E. picture the man who fears to he inconsistent? 
If we injured some one yesterday, shall we forget it to-day ? Why 
should we forget it if some one has injured us ? 



38 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

14. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 
wall. Out upon your guarded lips ! Sew them up with 
packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what 
you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and 
to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words 
again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. 
"Ah, then," exclaim the aged ladies, "you shall be sure to 
be misunderstood." Misunderstood ! It is a right fool's 
word. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood ? Pythag- 
oras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and ISTewton, and 
every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
great is to be misunderstood. 

15. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being as 
the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant 
in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you 
gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or 
Alexandrian stanza ; — read it forward, backward, or across, 
it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite 
wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day 
my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I 
cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean 
it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and 

14. Does it ever harm any one to be misunderstood ? When 
people claim that no one understands them, do they mean that others 
think too highly of them ? 

15. Is it inconsistent if one is truthful one day and untruthful the 
next ? Define prospect and retrospect as used here. What do 
the allusions to nature illustrate? Explain: "Character teaches 
above our wills." Can one be permanently misunderstood ? Cf. 14. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 39 

resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my 
window should interweave that thread or straw he carries 
in his bill into ray web also. We pass for what we are. 
Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they 
communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and 
do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. 

16. Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever 
variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, 
however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of 
when seen at a little distance, at a little height of thought. 
One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship 
is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only micro- 
scopic criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and 
it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine 
action will explain itself and will explain your other genu- 
ine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, 
and what you have already done singly will justify you now. 
Greatness always appeals to the future. If I can be great 
enough now to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so 
much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, 
do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always 
may. The force of character is cumulative. All the fore- 
gone days of virtue work their health into this. What 
makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field 
which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a 
train of great days and victories behind. There they all 
stand and shed an united light on the advancing actor. He 
is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every mean's 
eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's 

16. What is meant by a "genuine" action? What kinds of 
greatness appeal to the present ? What is the strongest sentence 
in this paragraph ? If one is in the habit of being truthful, why is 
it liard for him to be untruthful ? Explain: "Act singly." 



40 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON 

voicej and dignity into Washington's port, and America into 
Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no 
ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it 
to-day, because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it 
homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, 
but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old 
immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. 

17. I hope in these days we have heard the last of con- 
formity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and 
ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, 
let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow 
and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat 
at my house. I do not wish to please him ; I wish that he 
should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, 
and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. 
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and 
squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of 
custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot 
of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and 
Actor moving wherever moves a man ; that a true man be- 
longs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. 
Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all 
men, and all events. You are constrained to accept his 
standard. Ordinarily everybody in society reminds us of 
somewhat else or of some other person. Character, reality, 
reminds you of nothing else. It takes place of the whole 
creation. The man must be so much that he must make 
all circumstances indifferent, put all means into the shade. 
This all great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, 

17. What qualities in tlie Spartans would E. like ? What does 
E. mean by sayhig that he does not wish to please his guest ? How 
is an institution "the lengthened shadow of one man"? Name 
some of those "stout and earnest persons" whose biographies are 
United States history. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 41 

a country, and an age ; requires infinite spaces and numbers 
and time fully to accomplish his thought ; — and posterity 
seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar is 
born, and for ages after, we have a Eoman Empire. Christ 
is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his 
genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible 
of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one 
man ; as, the Reformation, of Luther ; Quakerism, of Fox ; 
Methodism, of AVesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, 
Milton called " the height of Rome " ; and all history re- 
solves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout 
and earnest persons. 

18. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and 
down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an inter- 
loper, in the Avorld which exists for him. But the man in 
the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds 
to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble 
god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, 
a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, 
much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, " Who 
are you, sir ? " Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, 
petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and 
take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is 
not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. 
That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk 
in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed 
and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with 
all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he 
had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it 

18. Is it conceited for a boy to tliink himself a good scholar ? 
How will stopping to think about it affect him ? If we are made 
shy and silent by magnificence, where is the fault ? Should you 
prefer to ask a favor of a really great man or a small one ? 



42 SELECTIONS FROM EMEESON. 

symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a 
sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, 
and finds himself a true prince. 

19. Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In his- 
tory, our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. 
Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vo- 
cabulary than private John and Edward in a small house 
and common day's work; but the things of life are the 
same to both ; the sum total of both is the same. Why all 
this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and G-ustavus ? 
Suppose they -were virtuous: did they Avear out virtue? 
As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as fol- 
lowed their public and renowned steps. When private men 
shall act with vast views, the lustre will be transferred 
from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. 

20. The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, 
who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is 
due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men 
have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great 
proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make 
his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay 
for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent 
the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they 
obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right 
and comeliness, the right of every man. 

21. The magnetism which all original action exerts is 
explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who 
is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self on which a 

19. What is the most striking sentence in this paragraph ? Is 
a small act important except to the actor and those who know it ? 

20. Of what is a king a symbol ? What does a king owe to the 
nation, and what similar duty does each man owe to every other man ? 

21. State all the thoughts that you find in this paragraph. 






SELF-RELIANCE. 43 

universal reliance may be grounded ? What is the nature 
and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, 
without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty 
even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of 
independence appear ? The inquiry leads us to that source, 
at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the 
essence of life, which we call spontaneity or instinct. We 
denote this primary wisdom as intuition, whilst all later 
teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact 
behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their com- 
mon origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours 
rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from 
things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but 
one with them, and proceedeth obviously from the same 
source whence their life and being also proceedeth. We 
first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards 
see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have 
shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and the 
fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration 
which giveth man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which 
cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in 
the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of 
its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern 
justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, 
but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this 
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all meta- 
physics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its ab- 
sence is all we can affirm. Every man discerns between 
the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary percep- 
tions ; and to his involuntary perceptions, he knows a per- 
fect respect is due. He may err in the expression of them, 
but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, 
not to be disputed. All my willful actions and acquisitions 
are but roving; the most trivial reverie, the faintest na- 



44 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

tive emotion are domestic and divine. Thoughtless people 
contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of 
opinions, or rather much more readily ; for, they do not 
distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy 
that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is 
not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will 
see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, although 
it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my 
perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 

22. The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must 
be that when God speaketh, he should communicate not one 
thing, but all things ; should fill the world with his voice ; 
should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the cen- 
ter of the present thought ; and new date and new create 
the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a 
divine wisdom, then old things pass away ; means, teachers, 
texts, temples fall ; it lives now and absorbs past and future 
into the present hour. All things are made sacred by rela- 
tion to it, one thing as much as another. All things are 
dissolved to their center by their cause, and in the universal 
miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. This is 
and must be. If, therefore, a man claims to know and 
speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology 
of some old moldered nation in another country, in another 
world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak 
which is its fullness and completion ? Is the parent better 
than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
Whence then this worship of the past ? The centuries are 
conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. 
Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye 

22. Define simple^ profane^ sanity, impertinence, as used here. 
Why do men often speak of God in biblical phrases, while they speak 
of their business in the language of everyday ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 45 

maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day ; where it 
was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, 
if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable 
of my being and becoming. 

23. Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright. 
He dares not say " I think," " I am," but quotes some saint 
or sage. He is ashamed before the l^lade of grass or the 
blowing rose. These roses under my window make no ref- 
erence to former roses or to better ones ; they are for what 
they are ; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to 
them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every 
moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its 
whole life acts ; in the full-blown flower, there is no more ; 
in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, 
and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no 
time to it. But man postpones or remembers ; he does not 
live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, 
or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tip- 
toe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong 
until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 

24. This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong 
intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak 
the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 
Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few 
texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by 
rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they 
grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance 
to see, painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; 

23. In what is " the blade of grass or the blowing rose " superior 
to the person? Cf. "These roses under my window," etc., with 
Compensation., 49, the last sentence. How can one live "above 
time"? 

24. In what ways does God speak ? Can one live truly without 
seeing truly ? 



46 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

afterwards, when they come into the point of view which 
those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, 
and are willing to let the words go ; for, at any time, they 
can use words as good, when occasion comes. So was it 
with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we 
shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be 
strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have 
new perception, we shall gladly disburthen the memory of 
its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives 
with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the 
brook and the rustle of the corn. 

25. And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
remains unsaid ; probably, cannot be said ; for all that we 
say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That 
thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is 
this. When good is near you, when you have life in your- 
self, it is not by any known or appointed way ; you shall 
not discern the footprints of any other ; you shall not see 
the face of man ; you shall not hear any name ; the way, 
the thought, the good shall be wholly strange and new. It 
shall exclude all other being. You take the way from man, 
not to man. All persons that ever existed are its fugitive 
ministers. There shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope 
are alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There is somewhat 
low even in hope. We are then in vision. There is noth- 
ing that can be called gratitude nor properly joy. The soul 
is raised over passion. It seeth identity and eternal causa- 
tion. It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence 
it becomes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things 
go well. Vast spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the 
South Sea ; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, are of 
no account. This which I think and feel, underlay that 
former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie 
25. State all the thoughts that you find in this paragraph. 



I 



SELF-RELIANCE. 47 

my present, and will always all circumstance, and what is 
called life, and what is called death. 

26 Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 
in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transi- 
tion from a past to a new state ; in the shooting of the gulf ; 
in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates 
that the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, 
turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame con- 
founds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas 
equally aside. Why then do we prate of self-reliance? 
Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not 
confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external 
way of speaking. Speak rather of that which rehes be- 
cause it works and is. Who has more soul than I masters 
me, though he shorUd not raise his finger. Bound him 1 
must revolve by the gravitation of spirits; who has less, i 
rule with like facility. We fancy it rhetoric when we speak 
of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, 
and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable 
to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and rule 
all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 

27 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach 
on this as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever- 
blessed One. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the reality. 
All things real are so by so much of virtue as they contain. 

26 Does E. mean that when a man dies, his having lived truly is 
worthless ? Is it worth anything to you to-day that you die riglrt 
yesterday f Explain : " Power not confident but agent." What is 
meant by one person having more soul than another? How does 
one boy gain more influence in school than another boy ? What 
is meant by being "permeable to principles"? , « „, 

27. Define ^^esolution as used here. What is "the One ' 
What makes a thing real? Do yon really possess a talent that 
you do not use ? e.g., for music ? lor making people happy ? Ct. 



48 SELECTIONS FBOM EMEU SON. 

Hardsliip, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, per- 
sonal weight, are somewhat, and engage ray respect as ex- 
amples of the soul's presence and impure action. I see the 
same law working in nature for conservation and growth. 
The poise of a planet, the bended tree recovering itself from 
the strong wind, the vital resources of every vegetable and 
animal, are also demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and 
therefore self-relying soul. All history from its highest to 
its trivial passages is the various record of this power. 

28. Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit at 
home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intrud- 
ing rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple 
declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the shoes 
from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our sim- 
plicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demon- 
strate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native 
riches. 

29. But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to put 
itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes 
abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of men. We must 
go alone. Isolation must precede true society. I like the 
silent church before the service begins, better than any 
preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons 
look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary. So let 
us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our 
friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around 
our hearth, or are said to have the same blood ? All men 
have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I 

Matthew xxv. 29. How is history the "record of this power" ? 
Cf. 17, last sentence. 

28. What is meant by " the divine fact" ? 

29. Does "awe" as used here mean /ear or respect? Judging 
from this paragrapli, should you think E. unsympathetic ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 49 

adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being 
ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, 
but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole 
world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with em- 
phatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, 
charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say, " Come 
out unto us." — Do not spill thy soul ; do not all descend ; 
keep thy state ; stay at home in thine own heaven ; come 
not for a moment into their facts, into their hubbub of con- 
flicting appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their 
confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give 
them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but 
through my act. ''What we love that we have, but by 
desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 

30. If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedi- 
ence and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us 
enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, 
courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be 
done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check 
this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer 
to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people 
with whom we converse. Say to them, father, mother, 
O wife, brother, friend, I have lived with you after 
appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be 
it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less 
than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but prox- 
imities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support 
my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife ; but these 
relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I 

30. Which shows the stronger will, obedience or disobedience ? 
Can an inferior person give the highest obedience ? Is this para- 
graph inconsistent with the fact that E. was affectionate to his family 
and hospitable to guests ? In what one word does E, express the 
old English motto, " Do the next thing" ? 



50 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot 
break myself any longer for you, — or you. If you can love 
me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, 
I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be my- 
self. I Avill not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so 
trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly be- 
fore the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the 
heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you ; if you 
are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical 
attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with 
me, cleave to your companions ; I will seek my own. I do 
this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your 
interest and mine and all men's, however long we have 
dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to- 
day ? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature 
as well as mine, and if we follow the truth, it will bring us 
out safe at last. But so you may give these friends pain. 
Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power to save 
their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments 
of reason when they look out into the region of absolute 
truth ; then will they justify me and do the same thing. 

31. The populace think that your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere anti- 
nomianism ; and the bold sensualist Avill use the name of 
philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness 
abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of 
which we must be shriven. You may fulfill your round of 
duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex 
way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations 

31. If one boy knows that no one in his class can complain of him, 
and another knows that he has done all that he could for each mem- 
ber, which clears himself in the "reflex way" ? Which demands 
more care, kindness, and courtesy, the "reflex" or the "direct" 
standard ? 



SELF-BELIANCE. 51 

to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; 
whether any of these can uiDbraid yoii. But I may also 
neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I 
have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies 
the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. 
But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense 
with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law 
is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 

32. And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has 
ventured to trust himself for a task-master. High be his 
heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good 
earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple 
purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to 
others. 

33. If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of these 
ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, 
and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We 
are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and 
afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect 
persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life 
and our social state, but we see that most natures are insol- 
vent ; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out 
of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and 
beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendi- 
cant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, 

32. What are some of the " common motives " that E. would cast 
off ? Can a boy be honest because he has decided that honesty 
is the best policy ? 

3:3. What characters in literature seem to you especially worthy of 
imitation ? Why ? What person of the present century ? Is it 
better to try to imitate perfection or what is only a little better than 
ourselves ? 



52 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are 
parlor soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where strength 
is born, we shun. 

34. If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, 
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say 
he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our 
colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year 
afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, 
it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in 
being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. 
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in 
turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, 
keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to congress, 
buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and 
always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of 
these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels 
no shame in not " studying a profession," for he does not 
postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, 
but a hundred chances. Let a stoic arise who shall reveal 
the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning 
v/illows, but can and must detach themselves; that with 
the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear ; that a 
man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the 
nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and 
that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the 
books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity 
him no more but thank and revere him ; and that teacher 
shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name 
dear to all history. 

35. It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance, a new 

34. What qualities has the "sturdy lad" developed? Does the 
city boy have a fair chance to succeed ? In what has he the ad- 
vantage over the country boy ? In what has the country boy 
the advantage ? 



SELF-IiELIANCE. 53 

respect for the divinity in man, must work a revolution in 
all the offices and relations of men ; in their religion ; in 
their education ; in their pursuits ; their modes of living ; 
their association ; in their property ; in their speculative 
views. 

36. (a) In what prayers do men allow themselves ! That 
which they call a holy office, is not so much as brave and 
manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign 
addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses 
itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and 
mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particu- 
lar commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. 
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the 
highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding 
and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his 
works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private 
end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not 
unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is 
at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer 
in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his 
field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the 
stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, 
though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, 
when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, 
replies, — 

" His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors ; 
Our valors are our best gods." 

35, Just what do you mean by self-reliance ? Is the boy who is 
self-reliant in the best sense in danger of self-conceit ? 

36. What kind of prayers are brave and manly ? Is prayer for 
the good of all necessarily unselfish ? What belief prevents prayer 
for a private end from being selfish ? "To labor is to pray," says 
the proverb. When is labor prayer and when is it not ? 



54 SELECTIONS FROM EMEU SON. 

37. Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Dis- 
content is tlie want of self-reliance ; it is infirmity of will. 
Eegret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer ; if 
not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to 
be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to 
them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for com- 
pany, instead o'f imparting to them truth and health in 
rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communi- 
cation with the soul. The secret of fortune is joy in our 
hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self- 
helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. Him all 
tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. 
Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did 
not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and 
celebrate him, because he held, on his way and scorned our 
disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. 
" To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, " the blessed 
Immortals are swift." 

38. As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are 
their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say wdth those 
foolish Israelites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die. 
Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." 
Everywhere I am bereaved of meeting God in my brother, 
because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables 
merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. 
Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a 
mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, 

37. Why do people sometimes cry over sufferings in books and not 
over those of real people ? How is discontent ' ' infirmity of will ' ' ? 
Is there any difference between real sympathy and "crying for com- 
pany " ? Do we sympathize with happiness or unhappiness more 
readily ? Does a happy person or an unhappy one have more influ- 
ence ? Why ? When ought one to " scorn disapprobation " ? 

38. How are some prayers a "disease of the will"? Cf. 37. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 55 

a Hiitton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it imposes its classifica- 
tion on other men, and lo ! a new system. In proportion 
always to tlie depth of the thought, and so to the number 
of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the 
pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in 
creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some 
powerful mind acting on the great elemental thought of 
duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, 
Quakerism, Swedenborgianism. The pupil takes the same 
delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology 
that a girl does who has just learned botany in seeing a new 
earth and new seasons thereby. It Avill happen for a time 
that the pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher, will find 
his intellectual power has grown by the study of his writ- 
ings. This will continue until he has exhausted his mas- 
ter's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification 
is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily ex- 
haustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to 
their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the uni- 
verse ; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the 
arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you 
aliens have any right to see, how you can see ; " It must be 
somehow that you stole the light from us." They do not 
yet perceive, that, light, unsystematic, indomitable, will 
break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp 
awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do 
well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too straight 
and low, will crack, will lean, will rot, and vanish, and the 
immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million- 
colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning. 

Is there any advantage in forming a definite creed ? Is there any- 
thing like a creed in mathematics ? in science ? in language ? in 
nature ? Why does one see more in nature after studying botany 
or geology ? Does truth grow, or the ability to see truth ? 



56 SELECTIONS FROM E3IERS0N, 

39. (b) It is for want of self-culture that the idol of 
traveling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains 
for all educated Americans. They who made England, 
Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by 
rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by 
sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. 
In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place, and that the 
merrymen of circumstance should follow as they may. 
The soul is no traveler ; the wise man stays at home with 
the soul, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occa- 
sion call him from his house or into foreign lands, he is at 
home still, and is not gadding abroad from himself; and 
shall make men sensible by the expression of his counte- 
nance that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, 
and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an 
interloper or a valet. 

40. I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation 
of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, 
so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad 
with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. 
He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he 
does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old 
even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, 
his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. 
He carries ruins to ruins. 

89. Of what kind of traveling does E. disapprove ? Does he 
mean that he would travel for business only ? Can a man " stay at 
home with the soul " if he is traveling? Was E.'s visit to Europe 
inconsistent with this paragraph ? How could one visit an art gal- 
lery or a libraiy "like a sovereign and not like an interloper"? 
Cf. 18. 

40. What does E. mean by being "domesticated" before one 
travels ? How does seeking amusement as a main object make one 
grow old ? What kind of ruins does the man described carry with 
him? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 57 

41. Traveling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first 
journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I 
dream that at Naples, at Eome, I can be intoxicated with 
beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace 
my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in 
Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, 
unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, 
and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and 
suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with 
me wherever I go. 

42. (c) But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of 
a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. 
The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of edu- 
cation fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our 
bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate ; and what 
is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our houses 
are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with 
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole, 
minds lean, and follow the Past and the Distant, as the 
eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the 
arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind 
that the artist sought his model. It was an application of 
his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions 
to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the 
Grothic model ? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, 
and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the 
American artist will study with hope and love the precise 
thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, 
the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and 
form of the government, he will create a house in which all 
these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment 
will be satisfied also. 

41. Explain the last sentence. 

42. Can we avoid imitation? What makes a work original? 
In architecture what must be considered ? 



58 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

43. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift 
you can present every moment with the cumulative force of 
a w^hole life's cultivation; but, of the adopted talent of 
another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. 
That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach 
him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that per- 
son has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have 
taught Shakespeare ? Where is the master who could have 
instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton ? 
Every great man is an unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is 
precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will 
tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis 
when he performs a great act, I will tell him who else than 
himself can teach him. Shakespeare will never be made by 
the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned thee, 
and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is 
at this moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand 
as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the 
Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from 
all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, 
with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if 
I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can reply to 
them in the same loitch of voice ; for the ear and the tongue 
are two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple 
and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt 
reproduce the Foreworld again. 

44. (fl) As our religion, our education, our art look abroad, 

43. Would E, object to a child's imitating the writing in a copy- 
book ? Could the child show any originality in doing this ? How 
best may one prepare to " present " his own gift ? How did Frank- 
lin and Washington prepare? What do we "reproduce of the 
Foreworld," if we cannot make statues like those of Phidias or 
write poems like those of Dante ? 

44. What can one pupil do to improve his class in scholarship, 
manners, etc. ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. ^^ 

so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves 
on the improvement of society, and no man improves. 

45 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent 
like the workers of a treadmill. It nndergoes contmual 
chan-es- it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it 
is ricdi, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. 
For everything that is given, something is taken. Society 
acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a contrast 
between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, 
with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, 
and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a 
spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep 
under But compare the health of the two men, and you 
shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has 
lost If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a 
broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal 
as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow 
shall send the white to his grave. 

46 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so 
much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch 
but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A 
Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the 
information when he wants it, the man in the street does 
not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not ob- 
serve ; the equinox he knows as little ; and the whole bright 

45 46 What else has the civilized man lost besides endurance ? 
Whai has he gained ? Which is better, on the whole, to have a 
watch, or merely to know how to tell time by the sun ? Can the 
civilized man regain any of the advantages of the uncivilized, and yet 
keep his own^ How does the insurance office increase accidents, 
libraries overload wit, etc. ? What made a man a stoic? Do 
you think every stoic was equally stoical ? 



60 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His 
note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his 
wit ; the insurance office increases the number of accidents ; 
and it may be a question whether machinery does not en- 
cumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some 
energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and 
forms some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a 
stoic ; but in Christendom where is the Christian ? 

47. There is no more deviation in the moral standard 
than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men 
are now than ever were. A singular equality may be ob- 
served between the great men of the first and of the last 
ages ; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy 
of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than 
Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. 
Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, 
Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no 
class. He who is really of their class will not be called by 
their name, but be wholly his own man, and in his turn the 
founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period 
are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm 
of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hud- 
son and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats 
as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment ex- 
hausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an 
opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of facts than 
any one since. Columbus found the New World in an un- 
decked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and 

47. Who are the greatest men of this century, and why are they 
great ? Are men of to-day any greater because of our many inven- 
tions ? Have these inventions benefited men or harmed them ? 
Could Napoleon conquer a country by the bivouac to-day ? • What 
reason had Napoleon for the thought expressed in the last sent once ? 
Of. Compensation, 10, "For everything you gain," etc. 



SELF-RELIANCE. 61 

perishing of means and machinery which were introdnced 
with loud laudation, a few years or centuries before. The 
great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the 
improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of sci- 
ence, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disen- 
cumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible 
to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, " without abolish- 
ing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until 
in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should re- 
ceive his supply of corn, grind it in his handmill, and bake 
his bread himself." 

48. Society is a wave. The Avave moves onward, but the 
water of which it is composed does not. The same particle 
does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only 
phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next 
year die, and their experience with them. 

49. And so the reliance on property, including the reli- 
ance on governments which protect it, is the want of self- 
reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at 
things so long that they have come to esteem what they 
call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned, and 
civil institutions, as guards of property, and they deprecate 
assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on 
property. They measure their esteem of each other by 
what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated 
man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of what he 

48. Do you think the illustration of the wave a fair one ? Is 
it of no permanent benefit to make a society or a class better ? 
Are we gaining anything from the early experience of our nation ? 
For a man to be called good, must he be better or worse than would 
have been the case one century ago ? 

49. Do we punish more severely crimes against the property or 
against the person ? How was it in earlier times ? Does a man 



Q2 SELECTIONS FROM EMEBSON. 

has, out of new respect for his being. Especially he hates 
what he has, if he sees that it is accidental, came to him 
by inheritance, or gift, or crime ; then he feels that it is not 
having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and 
merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes 
it away. But that which a man is, does always by neces- 
sity acquire, and what the man acquires is permanent and 
living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or 
mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but 
perpetually renews itself wherever the man is put. " Thy 
lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after 
thee ; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our de- 
pendence on Ihese foreign goods leads us to our slavish re- 
spect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous 
conventions ; the greater the concourse, and with each new 
uproar of announcement. The delegation from Essex ! The 
Democrats from New Hampshire ! The Whigs of Maine ! 
the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a 
new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the re- 
formers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in mul- 
titude. But not so, O friends ! will the God deign to enter 
and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is 
only as a man puts off from himself all externar support and 
stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. 
He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man 
better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and in the end- 
less mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear 

gain anything in acquiring property ? in inheriting it ? If we make 
a government, is it want of self-reliance to depend upon it ? Is 
what a man has in any way a measure of what he is, or of what he 
has had an opportunity to become ? Why are we surprised to find 
a man who owns a fine library ignorant of books ? Why do con- 
ventions arouse enthusiasm ? Is a man stronger in any way because 
he stands alone ? 



SELF-RELIANCE. 63 

the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows 
that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he 
has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so per- 
ceivino- throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, in- 
stantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands 
his limbs, works miracles ; just as a man who stands on his 
feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head. 

50 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 
with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls But 
do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with 
Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the \\ill 
work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of 
Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A political 
victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the 
return of your absent friend, or some other quite external 
event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are pre- 
paring for you. Do not believe it. It can never be so. 
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can 
bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 

50 Is it unwise to let any "external event" make us happy? 
Is it wise or unwise to allow very small things to make us happy? 
Has one a right to be unhappy ? Give a summary of this essay in 
one sentence. 



MANNERS. 



1. Half the world, it is said, knows not liow the other 
half live. Our exploring expedition saw the Feejee islanders 
getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to 
eat their own wives and children. The husbandry of the 
modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is 
philosophical to a fault. To set up their housekeeping, 
nothing is requisite but two or three earthen pots, a stone 
to grind meal, and a mat which is the bed. The house, 
namely, a tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. No rain 
can pass through the roof, and there is no door, for there 
is no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the 
house do not please them, they walk out and enter another, 
as there are several hundreds at their command. "It is 
somewhat singular," adds Belzoni, to whom we owe this 
account, "to talk of happiness among people who live in 
sepulchers, among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation 
which they know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo, 
the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, 
and the language of these negroes is compared by their 
neigbbors to the shrieking of bats and to the whistling of 
birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; indi- 
viduals are called after their height, thickness, or other 
accidental quality, and have nicknames merely. But the 

1. What is the main statement? How does E. illustrate it? 

Are these savages connected with us by our necessities or our 
luxuries ? 

64 



MANNERS. 



Q5 



salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these 
horrible regions are visited, find their way into countries 
where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in 
one race with these cannibals and man-stealers ; countries 
where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, 
gum, cotton, silk, and wool; honors himself with architec- 
ture ; writes laws, and contrives to execute his will through 
the hands of many nations; and especially, establishes a 
select society, running through all the countries of intelli- 
gent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity of 
the best, which, without Avritten law or exact usage of any 
kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island, 
and adopts and makes its own Avhatever personal beauty or 
extraordinary native endowment anywhere appears. 

2. What fact more conspicuous in modern history than 
the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and loy- 
alty is that, and in English literature, half the drama and 
all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, 
paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the 
word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and 
the few preceding centuries by the importance attached to 
it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. 
Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with 
the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be 
attributed to the valuable properties which it designates. 
An element which unites all the most forcible persons of 
every country, makes them intelligible and agreeable to each 
other, and is somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if 
an individual lack the masonic sign, — cannot be any casual 
product, but must be an average result of the character and 

2. What is meant by "incommunicable properties'' ? What 

qualities unite in E.'s ideal gentleman? What is the "element 

which unites," etc . ? AVhy does the ideal gentleman of to-day differ 
from the gentleman of earlier ages ? 



6Q SELECTIONS FROM EMEESON. 

faculties universally found in men. It seems a certain 
permanent average ; as the atmosphere is a permanent com- 
position, whilst so many gases are combined only to be 
decompounded. Comme ilfant, is the Frenchman's descrip- 
tion of good society : as ive must be. It is a spontaneous 
fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who 
have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this 
hour,' and, though far from pure, far from constituting the 
gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the 
whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit 
more than of the talent of men, and is a compound result, 
into which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely, 
virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power. 

3. There is something equivocal in all the words in use 
to express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, 
because the quantities are iiuxional, and the last effect is 
assumed by the senses as the cause. The word gentleman 
has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. 
Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must 
keep alive in the vernacular the distinction between fashion, 
a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic 
character which the gentleman imports. The usual words, 
however, must be respected: they will be found to contain 
the root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this 
class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, 
is that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are 
contemplated. It is beauty which is the aim this time, 

3. Why is it difficult to put our idea of the gentleman into words ? 
What additional qualities does this paragraph state that the gentleman 
must possess ? Which quality seems to you the most important ? 
Why do we commonly think of the gentleman as possessing some 
fortune ? Is fortune essential ? What kind of persons were emi- 
nent in feudal days ? What was " personal force " then, and how 
does it show itself now ? Why has the field of competition changed ? 



MANNEBS. 67 

and not worth. The result is now m question, although 
our words intimate well enough the popular feeling, that 
the appearance supposes a substance. The gentleman is a 
man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that 
lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent 
and servile either on persons, or oj^inions, or possessions. 
Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes 
good-nature or benevolence; manhood hrst, and then gen- 
tleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of 
ease and fortune ; but that is a natural result of personal 
force and love, that they should possess and dispense the 
goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent 
person must fall in with many opportunities to approve his 
stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that 
emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in 
our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force 
never goes out of fashion. That is still paramount to-day, 
and in the moving crowd of good society, the men of valor 
and reality are known, and rise to their natural place. The 
competition is transferred from war to politics and trade, 
but the personal force appears readily enough in these new 
arenas. 

4. Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in 
trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers 
and clerks. God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock 
at the door; but whenever used in strictness and with any 
emphasis, the name will be found to point at original 
energy. It describes a man standing in his own right, and 

4. What kind of "power" is needed to-day? How does E. 

describe a man of power ? How can a man attain to ' ' untaught 
methods " ? Can he become original by aiming at originality ? 

In difficult positions which is of more value, memory or thought ? 
e.g. Hobson before Santiago? Why is Lord Falkland's maxim 

called " timid " ? How does E. illustrate the power of a gentleman ? 



68 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

working after untaught methods. In a good lord there 
must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of yield- 
ing the incomparable advantage of animal spirits. The 
ruling class must have more, but they must have these, 
giving in every company the sense of power which makes 
things easy to be done which daunt the wise. The society 
of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meet- 
ings, is full of courage, and of attempts which intimidate 
the pale scholar. The courage Avhich girls exhibit is like 
a battle of Lundy's Lane or a sea light. The intellect 
relies on memory to make some supplies to face these 
extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base mendi- 
cant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sud- 
den masters. The rulers of society must be up to the work 
of the world and equal to their versatile office, men of the 
right Caesarian pattern, who have great range of affinity. 
I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord Falkland 
("that for ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold 
fellow will go through the cunningest forms,") and am of 
opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms 
are not to be broken through ; and only that plenteous nature 
is rightful master which is the complement of whatever 
person it converses with.. My gentleman gives the law 
where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral 
veterans in the field,- and outshine all courtesy in the hall. 
He is good company for pirates and good with academi- 
cians, so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; 
he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as 
easily exclude myself as him. The famous gentlemen of 
Asia and Europe have been of this strong type ; Saladin, 
Sapor, the Cid, Julius Ci3esar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, 
and the lordliest personages. They sat very carelessly in 
their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value any 
condition at a higrh rate. 



MAN NEBS. 69 

5. A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popu- 
lar judgment, to the completion of this man of the world; 
and it is a material deputy which walks through the dance 
which the first has led. Money is not essential, but this 
wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of clique and 
caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the 
aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles and not with 
truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the 
man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the 
gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is 
already really of his own order, he is not to be feared. 
Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the 
best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty when 
that of wealth was equally open to them. I use these old 
names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. 
Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these 
well-appointed knights, but every collection of men fur- 
nishes some example of the class; and the politics of this 
country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by 
these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention 
to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in 
fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular. 

6. The manners of this class are observed and caught 
with devotion by men of taste. The association of these 

5. What does E. mean by the phrase, "man of the world"? 
What is more essential to the gentleman than money, and how does it 
manifest itself in the aristocrat and in the man of the people ? What 
qualities make a boy a leader among boys ? Is a leader always a 
popular boy ? Cf. the last sentence with the fourth sentence of 
paragraph 4. Can one cultivate " a broad sympathy " ? 

6. Is it easy to be rude to a courteous person ? How, then, are 
fine manners "formidable" ? Why is it better policy to meet a 
rude person courteously ? How do good manners facilitate school- 
life ? What hindrances do they remove ? What common school- 
rules would be unnecessary if the manners of all were perfect ? Why 



V 



70 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

masters with eacli other, and with men intelligent of their 
merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good 
forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and 
adopted. By swift consent everything superfluous is 
dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners 
show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They 
are a subtler science of defense to parry and intimidate; 
but once matched by the skill of the other party, they 
drop the point of the sword, — points and fences disappear, 
and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmos- 
phere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a 
misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim 
to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the 
man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conver- 
sation, as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all 
avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to 
be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon be- 
come fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with 
the more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil 
distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal sem- 
blance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, 
the most feared and followed, and which morals and vio- 
lence assault in vain. 

7. There exists a strict relation between the class of 
power and the exclusive and polished circles. The last 

would the rule of turning to the right still be necessary ? What connec- 
tion has fashion with good manners ? Cf . the last sentence of this para- 
graph. Are fashionable manners and good manners always the same ? 
7. Why should the " exclusive circles " be interested in the " class 
of power"? How does E. illustrate this? Is one circle any 
more "exclusive" than another? What are the greatest men of 
to-day doing ? Illustrate. Why does fashion often care less for 
the great than for their children? How would a descendant of 

Shakespeare be treated ? Why need the city be recruited from the 
country ? Cf. Self-Reliance, 34, "A sturdy lad," etc. 



MANNERS. 71 

are always filled or filling from the first. The strong men 
usually give some allowance even to the petulances of 
fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child 
of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never 
ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain; doubtless with 
the feeling that fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. 
Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly 
virtue. It is virtue gone to seed; it is a kind of posthu- 
mous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the 
children of the great; it is a hall of the past. It usually 
sets its face against the great of this hour. Great men are 
not commonly in its halls, they are absent in the field ; they 
are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their 
children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of 
somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of 
distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, in 
their physical organization, a certain health and excellence, 
which secures to them, if not the highest power to work, 
yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the working 
heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this 
is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; 
that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and 
Trafalgar beaten out thin ; that the brilliant names of fash- 
ion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or 
sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be 
the reapers, and thei?' sons, in the ordinary course of things, 
must yield the possession of the harvest to new competi- 
tors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is 
recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, 
every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The 
city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, 
but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only coun- 
try which came to town day before yesterday, that is city 
and court to-day. 



72 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

8. Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. 
These mutual selections are indestructible. If they pro- 
voke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded 
majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority by 
the strong hand and kill them, at once a new class finds 
itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a boAvl of 
milk: and if the people should destroy class after class, 
until two men only were left, one of these would be the 
leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the 
other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of 
mind, but it is tenacious of life and is one of the estates 
of the realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity 
when I see its Avork. It respects the administration of such 
unimportant matters that we should not look for any dura- 
bility in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some 
strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious 
movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man 
and nature. We think all other distinctions and ties will 
be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion, for example; 
yet come from year to year, and see how permanent that 
is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where, too, it 
has not the least countenance from the law of the land. 
Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. 
Here are associations whose ties go over, and under, and 
through it, a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a 

8. What is the derivation of the word aristocracy? Of what 
quahties in men are aristocracy and fashion results ? Illustrate the 
third sentence by the life of Cromwell. Is it a boy's occupation or 
his interests that have to do with his being a gentleman ? Why 
cannot an agreeable society be formed of all the boys living on the 
same street ? What is meant by a man's " intrinsic rank " ? Is 
there any connection between the intrinsic value of a book and its 
price ? In what kind of society will a boy find a place ? What 
is the best way for him to enter good society ? 



MANNERS. '^^ 



college-class, afire-club, a professional association, a pot 
cal a religious convention ;- the persons seem to draw 
inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its 
m:Xi. will uo^ in the year meet again. Each returns 
to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains 
porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may 
befnvolous, or fashion maybe objectless, but the nature 
o tliis union and selection can be neither frivolous nor 
accidental. Each man's rank m that perfect graduation 
depends on some symmetry in his structure, or -me agre - 
ment in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doois 
unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of t^^^"' °-;^ ^^"^^ 
A natm-al gentleman finds his way m and will keep he 
oldest patrician out who has lost his intrinsic lank 
•pashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal 
Superiority of whatever country readily fraternize wit^i 
those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have dis- 
tinguished themselves in London and Pans by the purity 
of their tournure. 
/ 9 To say what good of fashion we can, - it rests on 
^ reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; to 
exeUe and mystify pretenders, and send them into ever- 
lasting "Coventry," is its delight. We contemn, in turn, 
every other gift of men of the world; but the habit, even m 
little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our 

9 Why does the habit of appealing to his own sense of propriety 
make a boy more gentlemanly ? Would it be better to have a defl- 
"rcode li mann:rs for all occasions ? What has a st^ng -U to 
do with good manners? Define self-reliance. Does the self 
relirn tmfn ever care for the advice of others ? What qualities are 
aCs in fashion? What kind of " self-content " is P ea-g, and 
what kind is displeasing ? What kind of deference is no g cable 
What is meant by a man's carrying "his «1>°'« ^^''^f ,,;"f 'l^™ , 
Ou<.ht a boy's " whole sphere " to be the same at home and m school . 



74 SELECTIONS FROM EMEBSON. 

own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all 
chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be 
sane and proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally 
adopt and give it the freedom of its saloons. A sainted 
soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged 
into the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster 
pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, 
as long as his head is not giddy with the new circumstance, 
and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and 
cotillons. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the 
laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The 
maiden at her first ball, the countryman at a city dinner, 
believes that there is a ritual according to which every act 
and compliment must be performed, or the failing party 
must be cast out of this presence. Later they learn that 
good sense and character make their own forms every 
moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay 
or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or 
stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and 
aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, 
let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands 
is composure and self-content. A circle of men perfectly 
well-bred would be a company of sensible persons in which 
every man's native manners and character appeared. If 
the fashionist have not this quality, he is nothing. We are 
such lovers of self-reliance that Ave excuse in a man many 
sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his posi- 
tion, which asks no leave to be, of mine or any man's good 
opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or 
woman of the world, forfeits all privilege of nobility. He 
is an underling; I have nothing to do with him; I will 
speak with his master. A man should not go where he 
cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him, — not 
bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. 



MANNERS. 75 

He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of 
mind and reality of relation which his daily associates draw 
him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an 
orphan in the merriest club. "If you could see Vich Ian 
Vohr with his tail on ! — " But Vich Ian Yohr must 
always carry his belongings in some fashion, if not added 
as honor, then severed as disgrace. 

10. There will always be in society certain persons who 
are mercuries of its approbation, and whose glance will at 
any time determine for the curious their standing in the 
world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. 
Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier 
deities, and allow them all their privilege. They are clear 
in their ofhce, nor could they be thus formidable without 
their own merits. But do not measure the importance of 
this class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be 
the dispenser of honor and shame. They pass also at their 
just rate; for how can they otherwise, in circles which 
exist as a sort of herald's office for the sifting of character? 

11. As the first thing man requires of man is reality, so 
that appears in all the forms of society. We pointedly, 
and by name, introduce the parties to each other. Know 
you before all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, and 
this is Gregory; — they look each other in the eye; they 
grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. 

10. "Why cannot a fop be the "dispenser of honor" ? Why is 
honor shown you by one person of more value than that shown by 
another ? 

11. Wliy is "reality" the first essential ? AVliy is it that a gen- 
tleman "never dodges"? What is the best reason for making 
visits ? Why do we learn more of a person on a country walk than 
in a parlor ? Why should Napoleon care more for etiquette than 
Lincoln ? Can an untruthful person show the highest courtesy ? 
Why? 



76 SELECTIONS FROM EMEBSON. 

It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges j his 
eyes look straight forward, and he assures the other party, 
first of all, that lie has been met. For what is it that we 
seek in so many visits and hospitalities? Is it jowi dra- 
peries, pictures, and decorations? Or do we not insatiably 
ask. Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a 
great household Avhere there is much substance, excellent 
provision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not 
encounter there any Amphitryon, Avho shall subordinate 
these appendages. I may go into a cottage, and find a 
farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, 
and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural 
point of old feudal etiquette that a gentleman who received 
a visit, though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his 
roof, but should wait his arrival at the door of his house. 
No house, though it were the Tuileries or the Escurial, is 
good for anything without a master. And yet we are not 
often gratified by this hospitality. Everybody we know sur- 
rounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, 
gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to 
interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem 
as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded 
nothing so much as a full rencontre, front to front with his 
fellow? It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use 
of these screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether 
the guest is too great or too little. We call together many 
friends who keep each other in play, or by luxuries and 
ornaments we amuse the young people and guard our retire- 
ment. Or if, perchance, a searching realist comes to our 
gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again 
Ave run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the 
voice of the Lord God in the garden. Cardinal Caprara, 
the Pope's legate at Paris, defended himself from the 
glances of Napoleon by an immense pair of green specta- 



BANNERS. 77 

cles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to 
.rally them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not 
great enough, with eight hundred thousand troops at his 
back, to face a pair of free-born eyes, but fenced himself 
with etiquette, and within triple barriers of reserve : and, 
as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was wont, 
when he found himself observed,' to discharge his face of 
all expression. But emperors and rich men are by no 
means the most skillful masters of good manners. No 
rent-roll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimula- 
tion; and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, 
as really all the forms of good-breeding point that way. 

12. I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's transla- 
tion, Montaigne's account of his journey into Italy, and 
am struck with nothing more agreeably than the self- 
respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in each place, 
the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some 
consequence. Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to what- 
ever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a 
duty to himself and to civilization. When he leaves any 
house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he causes 
his arms to be painted and hung up as a perpetual sign to 
the house, as was the custom of gentlemen. 

13. The complement of this graceful self-respect, and 
that of all the points of good breeding I most require and 
insist upon, is deference. I like that every chair should 

12. Did Montaigne "put on airs " ? 

13. Is it honest to show deference to one whom you do not think 
your superior ? Can every one show himself a king ? What 
qualities in a gentleman would prevent "noise" ? What qualities 
in a lady would make her "serene" ? Ought we to be interested 
in all the petty details about our friends ? What is the difference 
between hurry and haste ? May a man be courteous without 
intellectual cultivation ? 



78 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tendency to stateli- 
ness to an excess of fellowship. Let the incommunicable 
objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man 
teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. 
I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled 
with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want 
the hint of tranquillity arid self -poise. We should meet each 
morning as from foreign countries, and, spending the day 
together, should depart at night as into foreign countries. 
In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. 
Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all 
around Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this 
religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other 
sweet. Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they 
forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. 
It is easy to x^ush this deference to a Chinese etiquette, but 
coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine quali- 
ties. A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is serene. 
Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a 
studious house with blast and running, to secure some pal- 
try convenience. Not less I dislike. a low sympathy of 
each with his neighbor's needs. Must we have a good 
understanding with one another's palates? as foolish people 
Avho have lived long together know when each wants salt 
or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to 
ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, 
to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I 
knew already. Every natural function can be dignified by 
deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. 
The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should 
signify, however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur 
of our destiny. 

14. The flower of courtesy does not very well bide hand- 
ling, but if we dare to open another leaf and explore what 



MANNERS. 79 

parts go to its conformation, we shall find also an intel- 
lectual quality. To the leaders of men, the brain as well 
as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion. 
Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. 
Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful 
carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good 
breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We im- 
peratively require a perception of, and a homage to beauty 
in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the 
field and workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to 
be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat with 
one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a 
sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the 
world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. The 
same discrimination of ht and fair runs out, if with less 
rigor, into all parts of life. The average spirit of the 
energetic class is good sense acting under certain limita- 
tions and to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. 
Social in its nature, it respects everything which tends to 
unite men. It delights in measure. The love of beauty is 
mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person who 
screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with 
heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to 
be loved, love measure. You must have genius or a pro- 
digious usefulness, if you will hide the want of measure. 
This perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of 
the social instrument. Society will pardon much to genius 

14. What three qualities does E. think a leader must possess ? 
Cf. 5, last sentence. Can " fine perceptions " be cultivated ? To 
what kinds of beauty should homage be paid ? What has good 

sense to do with moderation ? Why do we avoid "the person who 
screams," etc. ? Can you judge a person by noticing what he laughs 
at ? Is society necessarily conventional ? What is the derivation 
of conventional? What is E.'s idea of "good fellowship" ? 



80 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it 
loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming 
together. That makes the good and bad of manners, 
namely, what helps or hinders fellowship. For fashion is 
not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense pri- 
vate, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners 
and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotisti- 
cal, solitary, and gloomy people ; hates whatever can inter- 
fere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all 
peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can 
consist with good fellowship. And besides the general 
infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of 
intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the 
costliest addition to its rule and its credit. 

15. The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, 
but it must be tempered and shaded, or that will also 
offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick percep- 
tions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. One 
may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave the 
omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into 
the palace of beauty. Society loves Creole natures, and 
sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover sense, 
grace, and good-will; the air of drowsy strength which 
disarms criticism, perha]3S because such a person seems to 
reserve himself for the best of the game, and not spend 
himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not see 
the annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences that cloud the 
brow and smother the voice of the sensitive. 

16. Therefore, besides personal force and so much per- 

15. How may accuracy become an annoyance ? In what respects 
would E. wisli people to have an " ignoring eye," and in what to have 
an observing eye ? Cf. 16, first sentence. 

16. Define good-nature. What is the difference between insight 
and intelligence ? How may one be a success in society ? What 



MANNERS. 81 

ception as constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its 
patrician class another element already intimated, which it 
significantly terms good-nature, expressing all degrees of 
generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to 
oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity and love. Insight 
we must have, or we shall run against one another and miss 
the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. 
The secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and 
sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company cannot 
find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All 
his information is a little impertinent. A man who is 
happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation equally 
lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to 
say. The favorites of society and what it calls ivJiole souls, 
are able men and of more spirit than wit, who have no 
uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and 
the company; contented and contenting, at a marriage or a 
funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. 
England, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, in the be- 
ginning of the present century, a good model of that genius 
which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to his great 
abilities the most social disposition and real love of men. 
Parliamentary history has few better passages than the 
debate in Avhich Burke and Fox separated in the House of 
Commons ; when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of 
old friendship with such tenderness that the house was 
moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my matter 
that I must hazard the story. A tradesman who had long 
dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him 
one day counting gold, and demanded payment: — "No," 
said Fox, " I owe this money to Sheridan ; it is a debt of 

is E.'s idea of a social favorite ? Wliat thoughts of E. does the 

second story of Fox iUustrate ? 



/ 



82 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

honor; if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing 
to show." "Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt 
into a debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox 
thanked the man for his confidence and paid him, saying, 
"his debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must wait." 
Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African 
slavC;, he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napo- 
leon said of him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 
1805, "Mr. Fox Avill always hold the first place in an 
assembly at the Tuileries." 

17. We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of 
courtesy whenever we insist on benevolence as its founda- 
tion. The painted phantasm Fashion rises to cast a species 
of derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven 
from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, 
nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We 
must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm 
this. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. 
Fashion, which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's 
experience, only a ballroom code. Yet, so long as it is the 
highest circle, in the imagination of the best heads on the 
planet, there is something necessary and excellent in it; 
for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the 
dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect which 
these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan charac- 
ters, and the curiosity with which details of high life are 
read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated man- 
ners. I know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we 
should enter the acknowledged "first circles" and apply 
these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit, to 

17. Why is love, or benevolence, the basis of courtesy ? Is the 
"love of cultivated manners"' universal ? Why does E. find some- 
thing good in fashion ? What second-rate claims will fashion 
admit ? Of such claims which is the strongest ? 



3IANNERS. 83 

the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, 
sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many 
classes and many rules of probation and admission, and not 
the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest 
which genius pretends, — the individual demonstrating his 
natural aristocracy best of the best ; — but less claims will 
pass for the time ; for Fashion loves lions, and points, like 
Circe, to her horned company. This gentleman is this 
afternoon arrived from Denmark; and this is my LordEide, 
who came yesterday from Bagdad; here is Captain Friese, 
from Cape Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the in- 
terior of the earth ; and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down 
this morning in a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and 
Eeverend Jul Bat, who has converted the whole torrid zone 
in his Sunday-school; and Signor Torre del Greco, who ex- 
tinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples; 
Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the 
exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon. 
But these are monsters of one day, and to-morrow will be 
dismissed to their holes and dens ; for in these rooms every 
chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in gen- 
eral, the clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and 
gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. 
Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending 
a year and a day in St. Michael's Square, being steeped in 
Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, 
and properly grounded in all the biography and politics and 
anecdotes of the boudoirs. 

18. Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let 
there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of 
temples. Let the creed and commandments even have the 

18. To what does E. compare the "grotesque sculptures," and to 
what the temples? How is parody "homage," e.g. a parody of a 
poem ? What qualities must service possess to be noble ? If 



84 SELECTIONS FBOM EMERSON. 

saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness univer- 
sally express benevolence in superlative degrees. What if 
they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of 
selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the 
true out of the world? AVhat if the false gentleman con- 
trives so to address his companion, as civilly to exclude all 
others from his discourse, and also to make them feel ex- 
cluded? Keal service will not lose its nobleness. All 
generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it 
to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness 
does at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. 
The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelli- 
gible to the present age. "Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, 
who loved his friend and persuaded his enemy : what his 
mouth ate, his hand paid for : what his servants robbed, he 
restored : if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her 
in pain : he never forgot his children : and whoso touched 
his finger, drew after it his whole body." Even the line 
of heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some 
admirable person in plain clothes standing on the wharf, 
Avho jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some 
absurd inventor of charities ; some guide and comforter of 
runaway slaves ; some friend of Poland ; some Philhellene ; 
some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and 
third generation, and orchards when he is grown old ; some 
well-concealed piety ; some just man happy in an ill-fame ; 
some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impa- 
tiently casting them on other shoulders. And these are the 
centers of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses. 
These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to 

fashion sometimes admits both the real and the false gentleman, how 
is the real one finally distinguished ? Cf. 17, sentence 3. What 
was Washington's jn-eparation for being commander-in-chief ? What 
kinds of men does E. regard as heroes ? 



MANNERS. 



85 



organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the gener- 
ou° are, in the theory, the doctors and apostles of this 
church; Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and 
Washington, and every pure and valiant heart who wor- 
shiped beauty by word and by deed. The persons who con- 
stitute the natural aristocracy are not found in the actual 
aristocracy, or only on its edge; as the chemical energy of • 
the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the 
spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who 
do not know their sovereign when he appears. The theory 
of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. 
It divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder 
gods, — 

" As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs ; 
And as we sliow beyond that Heaven and Earth, 
In form and shape compact and beautiful ; 
So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads ; 
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us, 
And fated to excel us, as we pass 
In glory that old Darkness : 

for, 'tis the eternal law, 

That first in beauty shall be first in might." 

y 19. Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, 
there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its 
light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always a 

19. Who compose the "purest circle of aristocracy in Europe" ? 
Is aristocracy used here in its original sense '? Illustrate the com- 
parison between Scott and Shakespeare. In the sentence, "Once 
or twice," etc., what does E. show to be his idea of the cause of fine 
manners? Can one consciously acquire a beautiful character? 
Can one consciously be a hero ? Why does a picture of natural 
scenery generally require human beings or suggestions of them to be 
satisfactory ? 



86 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and 
imperial court, the parliament of love and cliivahy. And 
this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic disposi- 
tions are native, with the love of beauty, the delight in 
society, and the power to embellish the passing day. If 
the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristoc- 
racy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should X3ass 
in review, in such manner as that we could at leisure and 
critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentle- 
man and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of 
courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assem- 
blage, in the particulars we should detect offense. Because 
elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. There must 
be romance of character, or the most fastidious exclusion 
of impertinencies will not avail. It must be genius which 
takes that direction ; it must be not courteous, but courtesy. 
High behavior is as rare in fiction as it is in fact. Scott is 
praised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor 
and conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings 
and queens, nobles and great ladies, had some right to com- 
plain of the absurdity that had been put in their mouths 
before the days of Waverley: but neither does Scott's dia- 
logue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smart 
epigrammatic sx^eeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and 
does not please on the second reading; it is not warm with 
life. In Shakespeare alone, the speakers do not strut and 
bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many 
titles that of being the best-bred man in England, and in 
Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted 
to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the presence of a 
man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose 
character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A 
beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful 
behavior is better than a beautiful form : it gives a higher 



n 



MANNERS. 87 

pleasure than statues or pictures ; it is the finest of the fine 
arts. A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects 
of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his 
countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magni- 
tude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. 
I have seen an individual, whose manners, though wholly 
within the conventions of elegant society, were never 
learned there, but were original and commanding, and held 
out protection and prosperity ; one who did not need the 
aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye ; who 
exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new 
modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of eti- 
quette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free 
as Eobin Hood; yet with the port of an emperor, if need 
be, — calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions. 
20. The open air and the fields, the street and public 
chambers, are the places where Man executes his will; let 
him yield or divide the scepter at the door of the house. 
Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in 
man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in 
short, any want of that large, flowing, and magnanimous 
deportment which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall. 
Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and 
at this moment I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, 
that it excels in women. A certain awkward consciousness 
of inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry 

20. What can raise a woman into ' ' heroical and godlike regions ' ' ? 
What qualities in the ideal woman do Minerva, Juno, and Polymnia 
typify? Can a schoolgirl show how she expects to be treated? 
What qualities make a woman able to meet all kinds of people accep- 
tably ? How did the Persian Lilla make people noble ? Who 
is liked better, the girl who tries to shine, or the one who tries to show 
the best points in other girls ? Why do not all imitate the favorite ? 
How can a girl be a benefactor to other girls ? 



«8 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

in behalf of Women's Rights. Certainly, let her be as 
much better placed in the laws and in social forms as the 
most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in 
her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only her- 
self can show us how she shall be served. The wonderful 
generosity of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical 
and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, 
Juno, or Polymnia; and, by the firmness with which she 
treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calcu- 
lators that another road exists than that which their feet 
know. But besides those avIio make good in our imagination 
the place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not 
women who fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, 
so that the wine runs over and fills the house with perfume; 
who inspire us with courtesy; who unloose our tongues, 
and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we see? We say 
things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls 
of habitual reserve vanished and left us at large; we were 
children playing with children in a wide field of flowers. 
Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, 
and we shall be sunny poets, and will write out in many- 
colored words the romance that you are. Was it Hafiz or 
Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, " She was an ele- 
mental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when 
I saw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant 
joy and grace on all around her. She was a solvent power- 
ful to reconcile all heterogeneous persons into one society ; 
like air or water, an element of such a great range of affini- 
ties that it combines readily with a thousand substances. 
Where she is present, all others will be more than they are 
wont. She was a unit and whole, so th?tt whatsoever she 
did became her. She had too much sympathy and desire 
to please than that you could say her manners were marked 
with dignity, yet no princess' could surpass her clear and 



BANNERS. 89 

erect demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the 
Persian grammar nor the books of the seven poets, but all 
the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her. For 
though the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to 
sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature as to 
meet intellectual persons by the fullness of her heart, 
warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, 
that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves 
noble." 

21. I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fash- 
ion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those who look 
at the contemporary facts for science or for entertainment, 
is not equally pleasant to all spectators. The constitution 
of our society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious 
youth who have not found their names enrolled in its 
Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted 
honors and privileges. They have yet to learn that its 
seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative ; it is great by 
their allowance; its proudest gates will fly open at the 
approach of their courage and virtue. For the present dis- 
tress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from 
the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To 
remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, 
will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. 
For the advantages which fashion values are plants which 
thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. 
Out of this precinct they go for nothing; are of no use in 
the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nup- 
tial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in 
friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue. 

21. Do you see any sarcasm in this paragraph ? Does E. use 
the wovd fashion in its higher or its lower sense in this paragraph ? 



90 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. ^ 

22. But we have lingered long enougli in these painted 
courts. The worth of the thing signified must vindicate 
our taste for the emblem. Everything that is called fash- 
ion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and foun- 
tain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely, the 
heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire which, 
in ail countries and contingencies, will work after its kind, 
and conquer and expand all that approaches it. This gives 
new meanings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, 
suffering no grandeur but its own. What is rich? Are you 
rich enough to help anybody? to succor the unfashionable 
and the eccentric? rich enough to make the Canadian in 
his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which 
commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian 
with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper 
hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane 
or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble excep- 
tion of your presence and your house from the general 
bleakness and stoniness ; to make such feel that they were 
greeted with a voice which made them both remember and 
hope? What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute 
and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to allow 
it, and give their heart and yours one holiday from the 
national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an 
ugly beggar. The King of Schiraz could not afford to be 
so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. 
Osman had a humanity so broad and deep, that although his 
speech was so bold and free with the Koran as to disgust 
all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccen- 

22. What does E. think is the foundation of all greatness ? What 
is E.'s idea of wealth ? vulgarity ? true gentility ? What could 
Osman give that the king could not ? Is it wise to sympathize with 
foolish people ? Is it easier to sympathize with joy or sorrow ? 

Why ? What does wealth " without the rich heart " beg ? 



MANNERS. 91 

trie, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or 
who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness 
in his brain, but fled at once to him ; that great heart lay 
there so sunny and hospitable in the center of the country, 
that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them 
to his side. And the madness which he harbored he did 
not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly 
rich? 

23. But I shall hear without pain that I play the courtier 
very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. 
It is easy to see that what is called by distinction society 
and fashion has good laws as well as bad, has much that is 
necessary and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, 
and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the 
pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 
"I overheard Jove, one day," said Silenus, "talking of de- 
stroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all 
rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as 
the days succeeded each other. Minerva said she hoped 
not; they were only ridiculous little creatures with this odd 
circumstance, that they had a blurr, or indeterminate aspect, 
seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, they would 
appear so; if you called them good, they would appear so; 
and there was no one person or action among them which 
would not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus to know 
whether it was fundamentally bad or good." 

23. Is it true that caUing a person good or bad helps him to become 
*so ? Define fashion in the lower and in the higher sense. Give 
E.'s idea of the cause of fine manners; how they are shown; how 
they may be cultivated ; how the true gentleman is distinguished from 
the false. In what respects should one's manner be the same to all ? 
What are the most practical thoughts that you have found in this 
essay ? 



POEMS. 



THE SNOW-STORM. 

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 5 

The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Come see the north wind's masonry. 10 

Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Eound every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 15 

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths ; 
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ; 
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20 

Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate 
A tapering turret overtops the work. 
92 



POEMS. 93 



And Avhen his hours are numbered, and the world 

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 25 

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone. 

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, 

The frolic architecture of the snow. 



HYMN: 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 
APRIL 19, 1836. 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood. 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 5 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
We set to-day a votive stone ; lO 

That memory may their deed redeem. 
When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 15 

The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



94 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 



THE HUMBLE-BEE. 



Burly, dozing humble-bee, 

Where thou art is clime for me. 

Let them sail for Porto E,ique, 

Far-off heats through seas to seek; 

I will follow thee alone, 5 

Thou animated torrid-zone ! 

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer. 

Let me chase thy waving lines; 

Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 

Singing over shrubs and vines. 10 

Insect lover of the sun, 

Joy of thy dominion ! 

Sailor of the atmosphere; 

Swimmer through the waves of air; 

Voyager of light and noon; 15 

Epicurean of June ; 

Wait, I prithee, till I come 

Within earshot of thy hum, — 

All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 20 

With a net of shining haze 

Silvers the horizon wall. 

And with softness touching all, 

Tints the human countenance 

With a color of romance, 25 

And infusing subtle heats, 

Turns the sod to violets, 

Thou, in sunny solitudes, 

Eover of the underwoods. 

The green silence dost displace 30 

With thy mellow, breezy bass. 



POEMS. 95 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 

Tells of countless sunny hours, 

Long days, and solid banks of flowers*, 35 

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 

In Indian wildernesses found ; 

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 

Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure 

Aught unsavory or unclean 40 

Hath my insect never seen ; 

But violets and bilberry bells. 

Maple-sap and daffodels, 

Grass with green flag half-mast high, 

Succory to match the sky, 45 

Columbine with horn of honey, 

Scented fern and agrimony, 

Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue 

And brier-roses, dwelt among ; 

All beside was unknown waste, 50 

All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer. 

Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 

Seeing only what is fair. 

Sipping only what is sweet, 55 

Thou dost mock at fate and care, 

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 

When the fierce northwestern blast 

Cools sea and land so far and fast. 

Thou already slumberest deep; 60 

Woe and want thou canst outsleep; 

Want and woe, which torture us, 

Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 



FOEBEARANCE. 

Hast tliou named all the birds without a gun? 

Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? 

At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? 

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 

And loved so well a high behavior, 

In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 

Nobility more nobly to repay? 

0, be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! 



THE EHODORA: 

ON BEING ASKED " WHENCE IS THE FLOWER ? " 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 

I found the fresh rhodora in the woods. 

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook. 

To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 

The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5 

Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 

And court the flower that cheapens his array. 

Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee Avhy 

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 10 

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing. 

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 

Why thou wert there, rival of the rose ! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew : 

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 15 

The self -same Power that brought me there brought you. 



POEMS. 



EACH AND ALL. 



97 



10 



Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown 

Of thee from the hill-top looking down; 

The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 5 

Dreams not that great Napoleon 

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height; 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 

All are needed by each one ; 

Nothing is fair or good alone. 

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven. 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 
I brought him home in his nest at even ; 
He sings the song, but it pleases not now, 
For I did not bring home the river and sky ; — 
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye. 
Tlie delicate shells lay on the shore ; 
The bubbles of the latest wave 
Fresh pearl to their enamel gave. 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 

Greeted their safe escape to me. 

I wiped away the weeds and foam, 

I fetched my sea-born treasures home; 

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 

Had left their beauty on the shore 

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. 

The lover watched his graceful maid, 

As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 



15 



20 



25 



98 SELECTIONS FROM EMEIISON. 

Nov knew her beauty's best attire 

Was woven still by the snow-white choir. 

At last she came to his hermitage 

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ; — 

The gay enchantment was undone, 35 

A gentle wife, but fairy none. 

Then I said, " I covet truth ; 

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; 

I leave it behind with the games of youth :" — 

As I spoke, beneath my feet 40 

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 

Kunning over the club-moss burs ; 

I inhaled the violet's breath; 

Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 45 

Over me soared the eternal sky. 

Full of light and of deity ; 

Again I saw, again I heard. 

The rolling river, the morning bird; — ■ 

Beauty through my senses stole; 50 

I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 



FOEEBUNNERS. 

LoxG I followed happy guides, 
I could never reach their sides ; 
Their step is forth, and, ere the day. 
Breaks up their leaguer, and away. 
Keen my sense, my heart was young. 
Bight good-will my sinews strung. 
But no speed of mine avails 
To hunt upon their shining trails. 



POEMS, 99 

On and away, their hasting feet 

Make the morning proud and sweet; 10 

Flowers they strew, — I catch the scent ; 

Or toiie of silver instrument 

Leaves on the wind melodious trace; 

Yet I could never see their face. 

On eastern hills I see their smokes, 15 

Mixed with mist by distant lochs. 

I met many travelers 

Who the road had surely kept; 

They saw not my fine revelers, — 

These had crossed them while they slept. 20 

Some had heard their fair report, 

In the country or the court. 

Fleetest couriers alive 

Never yet could once arrive. 

As they went or they returned, 25 

At the house where these sojourned. 

Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, 

Though they are not overtaken ; 

In sleep their jubilant troop is near, — 

I tuneful voices overhear; 30 

It may be in wood or waste, — 

At unawares 'tis come and past. 

Their near camp my spirit knows 

By signs gracious as rainbows. 

I thenceforward and long after, 35 

Listen for their harp-like laughter, 

And carry in my heart for days 

Peace that hallows rudest ways. 



100 SELECTIONS FJIOM EMERSON. 



WOODNOTES. 



1. 

"For this present, hard 
Is the fortune of the bard, 

Born out of time ; 
All his accomplishment, 
From Nature's utmost treasure spent, 5 

Booteth not him. 
When the pine tosses its cones 
To the song of its waterfall tones, 
He speeds to the woodland walks. 
To birds and trees he talks. 10 

Caesar of his leafy Kome, 
There the poet is at home. 
He goes to the river-side, — 
Not hook nor line hath he ; — 
He stands in the meadows wide, — 15 

Nor gun nor scythe to see. 
With none has he to do. 
And none seek him. 
Nor men below. 

Nor spirits dim. 20 

Sure some god his eye enchants. 
What he knows nobody wants. 
In the wood he travels glad, 
Without better fortune had. 

Melancholy without bad. 25 

Planter of celestial plants. 
What he knows nobody wants; 
What he knows he hides, not vaunts. 
Knowledge this man prizes best 
Seems fantastic to the rest: 30 



POEMS. 



101 



Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 

Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds, 

Boughs on which the wild bees settle. 

Tints that spot the violet's petal, 

Why Nature loves the number five, 35 

And why the star-form she repeats : 

Lover of all things alive, 

Wonderer at all he meets, 

Wonderer chiefly at himself,— 

Who can tell him what he is? ^o 

Or how meet in human elf 

Coming and past eternities? 

2. 
And such I knew, a forest seer, 
A minstrel of the natural year. 
Foreteller of the vernal ides, ^5 

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, 
A lover true, who knew by heart 
Each joy the mountain dales impart; 
It seemed that Nature could not raise 
A plant in any secret place, . ^o 

In quaking bog, on snowy hill. 
Beneath the grass that shades the rill, 
Under the snow, between the rocks, 
In damp fields known to bird and fox, 
But he would come in the very hour 55 

It opened in its virgin bower. 
As if a sunbeam showed the place, 
And tell its long-descended race. 
It seemed as if the breezes brought him ; 
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him; 60 

As if by -secret sight he knew 
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. 



102 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

Many haps fall in the field 

Seldom seen by wishful eyes ; 

But all her shows did Nature yield, 65 

To please and win this pilgrim wise. 

He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; 

He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; 

He found the tawny thrush's broods; 

And the shy hawk did Avait for him; 70 

What others did at distance hear, 

And guessed within the thicket's gloom, 

Was showed to this philosopher. 

And at his bidding seemed to come. 



3. 

In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang 75 

Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; 

He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 

The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone; 

Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 

And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 80 

He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, 

The slight Linnsea hang its twin-born heads. 

And blessed the monument of the man of flowers. 

Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern 

bowers. 
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, 85 

With sudden roar the aged pine tree falls, — 
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect tree, 
Declares the close of its green century. 
Low lies the plant to whose creation went 
Sweet influence from every element; 90 

Whose living towers the years conspired to build, 
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. 



POEMS. 103 

Through these green tents, by eldest Nature dressed, 

He roamed, content alike with man and beast. 

Where darkness found him he lay glad at night; 95 

There the red morning touched him with its light. 

Three moons his great heart him a hermit made. 

So long he roved at will the boundless shade. 

The timid it concerns to ask their way, 

And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray, lOO 

To make no step until the event is known, 

And ills to come as evils past bemoan. 

Not so the wise; no coward watch he keeps 

To spy what danger on his pathway creeps; 

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 105 

His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome; 

Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, 

By God's own light illumined and foreshowed. 

4. 

'Twas one of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow, no 

The wind may alter twenty ways, 

A tempest cannot blow; 

It may blow north, it still is Avarm; 

Or south, it still is clear; 

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; 115 

Or west, no thunder fear. 

The musing peasant lowly great 

Beside the forest water sate; 

The rope-like pine roots crosswise grown 

Composed the network of his throne ; 120 

The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, 

Was burnished to a floor of glass. 

Painted with shadows green and proud 

Of the tree and of the cloud. 



104 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

He was the heart of all the scene ; 125 

On him the sun looked more serene; 

To hill and cloud his face was known, — 

It seemed the likeness of their own; 

They knew by secret sympathy 

The public child of earth and sky. 130 

"You ask," he said, "what guide 

Me through trackless thickets led, 

Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough and wide. 

I found the water's bed. 

The watercourses were my guide; 135 

I traveled grateful by their side, 

Or through their channel dry ; 

They led me through the thicket damp, 

Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, 

Through beds of granite cut my road, 140 

And their resistless friendship showed : 

The falling waters led me. 

The foodful waters fed me, 

And brought me to the lowest land, 

Unerring to the ocean sand. 145 

The moss upon the forest bark 

Was pole-star when the night was dark; 

The purple berries in the wood 

Supplied me necessary food; 

For Nature ever faithful is 150 

To such as trust her faithfulness. 

When the forest shall mislead me. 

When the night and morning lie. 

When sea and land refuse to feed me, 

'Twill be time enough to die; 155 

Then will yet my mother yield 

A pillow in her greenest field. 

Nor the June flowers scorn to cover 

The clay of their departed lover." 



POEMS. 105 



THE WORLD-SOUL. 

Thanks to the morning light, 

Thanks to the foaming sea, 
To the uplands of New Hampshire, 

To the green-haired forest free ; 
Thanks to each man of courage, 5 

To the maids of holy mind. 
To the boy with his games undaunted 

Who never looks behind. 

Cities of proud hotels, 

Houses of rich and great, 10 

Vice nestles in your chambers, 

Beneath your roofs of slate. 
It cannot conquer folly, — 

Time-and-space-conquering steam, — 
And the light-outspeeding telegraph 15 

Bears nothing on its beam. 

The politics are base; 

The letters do not cheer : 
And 'tis far in the deeps of history. 

The voice that speaketh clear. 20 

Trade and the street ensnare us, 

Our bodies are weak and worn ; 
We plot- and corrupt each other. 

And we despoil the unborn. 

Yet there in the parlor sits 25 

Some figure of noble guise, — 
Our angel, in a stranger's form. 

Or woman's pleading eyes; 



106 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

Or only a flashing sunbeam 

In at the window-pane ; 30 

Or Music pours on mortals 

Its beautiful disdain. 

The inevitable morning 

Finds them who in cellars be; 
And be sure the all-loving Nature 35 

Will smile in a factory. 
Yon ridge of purple landscape, 

Yon sky between the walls, 
Hold all the hidden wonders 

In scanty intervals. 40 

Alas ! the Sprite that haunts us 

Deceives our rash desire; 
It whispers of the glorious gods, 

And leaves us in the mire. 
We cannot learn the cipher 45 

That's writ upon our cell; 
Stars help us by a mystery 

Which we could never spell. 

If but one hero knew it, 

The world would blush in flame ; 50 

The sage, till he hit the secret, 

Would hang his head for shame. 
But our brothers have not read it, 

Not one has found the key ; 
And henceforth we are comforted, — 55 

We are but such as they. 

Still, still the secret presses ; 
The nearing clouds draw down; 



POEMS. 107 

The crimson morning flames into 

The fopperies of the town. 60 

Within, without the idle earth, 

Stars weave eternal rings; 
The sun himself shines heartily. 

And shares the joy he brings. ^ 

And what if Trade sow cities 65 

Like shells along the shore, 
And thatch with towns the prairie broad 

With railways ironed o'er? — 
They are but sailing foam-bells 

Along Thought's causing stream, 70 

And take their shape and sun-color 

From him that sends the dream. 

For Destiny does not like 

To yield to men the helm ; 
And shoots his thought by hidden nerves 75 

Throughout the solid realm. 
The patient Daemon sits, 

With roses and a shroud; 
He has his way, and deals his gifts, — 

But ours is not allowed. 80 

He is no churl nor trifler. 

And his viceroy is none, — 
Love-without-weakness, — 

Of Genius sire and son. 
And his will is not thwarted ; 85 

The seeds of land and sea 
Are the atoms of his body bright, 

And his behest obey. 



108 SELECTIONS FROM EMERSON. 

He serveth the servant, 

The brave he loves amain; 90 

He kills the cripple and the sick, 

And straight begins again ; 
For gods delight in gods, 

And thrust the weak aside; 
To him who scorns their charities 95 

Their arms fly open wide. 

When the old world is sterile 

And the ages are effete, 
He will from wrecks and sediment 

The fairer world complete. lOO 

He forbids to despair; 

His cheeks mantle with mirth; 
And the unimagined good of men 

Is yeaning at the birth. 

Spring still makes spring in the mind 105 

When sixty years are told; 
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart. 

And we are never old. 
Over the winter glaciers 

I see the summer glow, 110 

And through the wild-piled snowdrift. 

The warm rosebuds below. 



NOTES. 



The one thing attempted in the -'^^^^''^.rf'''^''^^]^ 
i, to make these parts of service to the pupils who will read it. It has 
ttiXfs ened hotter to suggestasearcb.perhapseven too close £0 

he poet' literal meaning, rather than to risk leaving an impress on o 
the poet m ^„t° „„ne For facts concerning Emerson's life 

Z Concord, J. E. Cahot's Memoir of Emerson, and O. W. Holmes s 
Balph Waldo Emerson. 

COMPENSATION. 
11 A by-word and a hissing : Emerson was once hi^^^ed/^t ^ 
no it'icatmeetin. in Camhridgeport. A friend who was present said 
^ne "Iddti^^k of nothing hut dogs haying at the moon. He was 
„nlight i^eU^;^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ 

« i^iPcnnts of Egypt : the Hyksos, or shepherd kings. The 

for;: Srt' W (OenesiJ^ii. 10) is assigned to theea^J, 
part of their reign, and that of Joseph (Genesis xxxvii. 28) to the 

^'rxrutttwo'rXetc.., cf. John i. 10. Ot . . , .WC™ : 

— ;t i::::r ot'^Cl ■ ef. the address to the ^^hack- 

— -:a^:nn-=^s^^^^:^^^ 

can illustration of the thought is the story of Mrs. Partington s trym. 

to sweep back the Atlantic with her broom Auaustine 

20. How secret art thou, etc. : Confessions of St. Augustine 

(fourth century), Book I. 18. 

^ 109 



110 NOTES. 

21. Prometheus : the secret was how to avert the predicted fall of 
Jupiter. It was because of Prometheus's persistent refusal to reveal it 
that he suffered the torture of the rock and the vulture. Of all 
the gods, etc. : from the Eumenides of ^schylus. 

22. The belt -which Ajax gave, etc. : an almost literal translation 
of lines in the Ajax of Sophocles. 

23. Interfering volitions : originality. 

28. You cannot do wrong w^ithout suffering -wrong : Emerson 
wrote in his journal : "I have confidence in the laws of morals as of 
botany. I have planted maize in my field every June for seventeen 
years, and I never knew it come up strychnine." 

30. Obscene : ill-omened. 

33. Worm worms : Exodus xvi. 16-21. 

34. It is best to pay in your land a skillful gardener : this 
statement is hardly consistent with Emerson's practice. He called 
raising pears his " expensive vice," and always sent specimens of his 
fruit to the September exhibition. At last the long-suffering com- 
mittee called to see what kind of soil it was that produced "such poor 
specimens of such fine varieties." 

36. No den ... to hide a rogue : cf. Webster's famous portrayal 
of the impossibility of concealing a crime, — Speech on the 3Iurder of 
Captain Joseph White, paragraph 6. * 

37. Royal armies sent against Napoleon : on his escape from 
Elba. Winds blow and waters roll : from Wordsworth's son- 
net, " Inland, within a hollow vale I stood." 

41. Mob : for a description of a mob of Emerson's day, see Life of 
Arthur Tappan, by Lewis Tappan, pages 168-175. 

46. Apparent : in appearance only. 

48. As the shell-fish, etc. : cf. Holmes's Chambered Nautilus. 
A putting off of dead circumstances : Emerson wrote to his young 
daughter, who was away at school, bidding her finish every day and 
be done with it, forget its blunders and absurdities as soon as pos- 
sible, and begin each new day well and serenely, with a spirit too 
high to be cumbered with old nonsense. 

SELF-KELIANCE. 

1. Speak your latent conviction : Emerson wrote in his journal, 
in 1834 : " Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, poem, or book 
that is not entirely and peculiarly my own work." 



NOTES. 11^ 

Abolition : in 1837, lour years before this essay was printed, at 



a in "r" r iu ;;;r o7;,a;;-ry .as per,„itte. in but one ci.u.i, 
fuBTsto Emerson clelivered an anti-slavery address u. Concord. Its 
Ihrpo nt was a demand for the right of free thought and free speech, 
rbaaos: the inhabitants were chiefly negroes, ^'^ --;--- 
nated by England in 1831. My poor : Emerson's pool , 1 ke those 
of Chals Lamb, were generally the ones for whom no one else would 

''^vl Alexandrian stanza: Emerson means the palindrome^ One 
of ihe most "wous is Adam's supposed speech to Eve. - " Madan^ 
I'n Adam " Contrite wood-life : humble life with nature. My 
Look should smell of pines : Emerson's thinking was done m the 
woods —r and winter. His "study" at home was merely to 
r,d his r ks and afford him a convenient place to vvrite. He says 
h° his" ournal tl>at he has scarce a day-dream on which the breath of 
the pines has not blown and their shadows waved. 

10 Chatham: William Pitt, born 1708. Adams. Sanue 

Adams "Father of the Revolution." EpUemans: a thmg of but 
transient value. Some of the later editions -j^f "f .^'Z "rHome ■ 
17. Scipio: Scipio Africanus Major. The height of Home. 

Paradise Lost, Book IX. 510. rhi-istonher 

IS Pable of the sot : one version IS the story of tluistopnei 

Sly" in the induction of the Taming of the «"--• -°*^' '^ ^^^ 
rf " Abou Hassan, or the Sleeper Awakened," .n ^^^^framnmoMs. 

19 Gnstavus : Gustavus Adolphus, or Gustavus II. of Sweden. 

2l'. That inspiration which giveth man wisdom: m an ad- 
dress delivered in 1854 he makes his thought even more clear: Sel - 
reliance, the height and perfection of man, .s reliance on God. 

Fatal: inevitable (fated). , i.T!,.iQlrwiplder 

34. A sturdy lad, etc.: cf. Whittier's ^KOtt'Coam!, "Buskwielder 

of the birch and rule." 
31!. Fletcher : John Fletcher, the dramatist. . ^,„ 

38 Let not God speak to us, lest we die: Genesis xx. 19. 
LoL U.ok the position that all our knowledge comes from sensa ion 
ami reflection, that we have no innate ideas. Lavoisier mvented a 
"pie chemical terminology to take the place of the absurf on^ o e 
alchemists. Button's theory was that the present — » ^ ^^^ 
earth's crust is due in greater degree to the action of fiie than of 
water Bentham "found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a 
Xce." (Maeaulay.) Spurzheim is said to have discovered 



112 NOTES. 

the fibrous structure of the brain. Light, unsystematic, indomi- 
table, etc.: expressed less poetically in his poem, The World-Soul, 
lines 33-36. 

39. It is for want of self-culture : cf. Curtis's Prue and I: "I 
beghi to suspect a man must have Italy and Greece in his heart and 
mind, if he would ever see them with his eyes." Merrymen: fol- 
lowers. 

43. Thousand-cloven tongue : Acts ii. 1-4. 

47. Las Casas : Las Cases, who wrote Memorial de Sainte- 
Helene. 

48. Phenomenal : in appearance. 

49. Caliph Ali : a cousin and devoted follower of Mohammed, a' 
learned man and a poet. 

MANNERS. 

1. Feejee (Fiji) : this essay was published in 1844. In 1898 the 
Fiji Islands contributed several thousand dollars to aid the starving 
people of India. Tibboos, Bornoos : African tribes. Emerson 
had been reading Heeren's Historical Researches. 

4. Sense of power which makes things easy : "I like people 
who can do things," Emerson wrote in his journal. He was singu- 
larly helpless in some practical matters, especially in the use of tools. 
When he was working in the garden, his little son called to him, 
"Take care, papa, you will dig your leg." He said himself that he 
could split a shingle four ways with one nail. The right Caesarian 
pattern : the man of many interests, with a specialty. 

6. Fine manners: Emerson's journal says, '-I think there is as 
much merit in beautiful manners as in hard work." 

7. Faubourg St. Germain : the knights of St. Germain included 
tliose lords created by James II. after the Revolution of 1688, and 
by his son and grandson. Notes and Queries, 2d series. III. 112. 
Emerson uses the expression as a synonym for the abode of people of 
fashion. Hall of the past : Walhalla, or Valhalla. Westminster 
Abbey is called "the Valhalla of England." 

8. Toumure : cast of mind as evinced by their behavior. 

9. Send into everlasting Coventry : the citizens of Coventry are 
said to have had at one time so great a dislike to soldiers, that to send 
a soldier to Coventry was equivalent to excluding him from all social 
intercourse. Vich Ian Vohr : a chief in Waverley, Chapter XVI. 



NOTES. 113 

"If you Saxon duinh^-wassel [English gentlemen] saw but the Chief 
with his tail on!" "With his tail on?" echoed Edward in some 
surprise. " Yes — that is, with all his usual followers, when he visits 
those of the same rank." 

10. Herald's office : Heralds' College, or College of Arms. 

17. Captain Symmes : a real person, who serves the author's 
purpose as well as the imaginary heroes in whose company he finds 
himself. St. Michael's Square: the order of St. Michael was 
founded by Louis XI. in 14G9, and was at first limited to thirty-six 
members. Queen Elizabeth was greatly pleased at being made a 
member, but her wrath was aroused by the discovery that the original 
limitations had been lost sight of, and that it was no longer the ex- 
clusive company of the previous century. Holmes speaks of the St. 
Michael's pear as being among "the most aristocratic pears," and 
familiar to Emerson's boyhood. 

18. As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far : Keats's Hyperion. 

19. No bar in their nature : no mark of inferiority. 

20. Hafiz : the allegorical, mystical character of Persian poetry 
appealed strongly to Emerson. See his essay, Persian Poetry. 

21. Byzantine : an ornate style of architecture, marked especially 
by the free use of gold and of color in decorations. 

22. Osman: Emerson uses this name in his journals and elsewhere 
to represent his ideal man. 

THE SNOW-STOKM. 

Notice that it is the personification of the north wind that gives life 
and the charm of action to the poem. Without this, it would be 
simply a beautiful picture. 

Is the scene laid in a village or in the country? In lines 1-9, 
which is the most sonorous line ? Which words show the severity of 
the storm ? Which words are used in an unusual sense ? Is there 
any special order in hills, woods, river, heaven, farmhouse? Could 
hides and veils be transposed ? Is there any special order in traveler, 
courier, friends, housemates f Why is tumultuous privacy a good 
expression ? Why is there a break between lines 9 and 10 ? What 
is the main subject of lines 1-9 ? What of lines 10-28 ? How do 
lines 1-2 introduce the second part ? 

Trace the personification in the poem. AVhat adjectives or epithets 
are applied to the wind ? What to its work ? How does the poem 



114 NOTES. 

show study of nature ? How does it show imagination ? What ex- 
pressions show that Emerson knew country life. Does he show knowl- 
edge of architecture ? What contrast does he suggest at the end of 
the poem ? 

Comparing Longfellow's Bain in Summer with the Snow-Storm, 
which shows closer observation of details? Comparing Whittier's 
Snowhound with the Snow-Storm^ which has more of the human ele- 
ment ? Which shows the more sympathetic thought of the animals ? 
In these last two poems, which description of the coming of the storm 
do you prefer ? Why ? Which description of the scene in the morn- 
ing is the more simple and natural ? Why ? Which description of 
the fireside do you prefer ? Why ? Is Emerson's poem simply a 
picture of a snow-storm, or has it a moral ? 



HYMN: 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT. 

Emerson's grandfather, Rev. William Emerson, watched the Concord 
fight from his own doorstep, and would have taken part in it, if his 
parishioners had not prevented. His account of it may be found in 
Emerson's works (Vol. XI., Riverside edition). 

William Emerson's sermon of March 13, 1775, on 2 Chronicles 
xiii. 12, did much to arouse and encourage the brave men of Concord. 
A few days before the fight he preached even more boldly on '' Resist- 
ance to tyrants is obedience to God." 

That the monument should have been placed where the British stood 
was a great grievance to one of the Concord farmers, and he left money 
to mark the position occupied by the colonists, and to build a foot- 
bridge where the old bridge had stood at the time of the battle. April 
19, 1875, the well-known statue of the Minute-man was unveiled. 
On this occasion Emerson delivered a short address, which is given 
in full in G. W. Cooke's Balph Waldo Emerson, page 182. 

8. "The Concord River is a languid, shallow stream that loiters 
through broad meadows, which fringe it with rushes and long grasses." 
{_G. W. Curtis.) 

Describe the Concord light. What was its value to the colonists ? 
What is the highest motive with which a Concord farmer might have 
fought ? a British soldier ? What does embattled mean as used here ? 
Explain line 11 ? What Spirit is meant in line 13? What lines are 



NOTES. 115 

figurative ? What is the best line in the poem ? Why ? Is it literal 
or figurative ? 

THE HUMBLE-BEE. 

16. Emerson's son calls attention to the fact that his father's early 
verses scan and rhyme perfectly, but lack the originality of his later 
work. Emerson himself writes (The Poet) that what makes a poem 
-is not metres, but " a thought so passionate and alive that ... it has 
an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing." 

57. Cf. Emerson's lines To J. W.: — 

' ' Life is too short to waste 
In critic peep or cynic bark." 

Why would Emerson be more inclined to write on a bee than on a 
nightingale or a skylark ? How is imagination shown in line 2 ? 
Why does Emerson connect the bee with the torrid zone ? In stanza 
3, which is the most poetical line ? How is gr^een applicable to 
silence ? Why had the bee seen no evil ? Would lines 54-55 be a 
good motto ? Which adjectives or epithets applied to the bee show 
observation, and which show imagination ? What words show that 
Emerson noticed color, light, sound, motion, fragrance ? Judging 
from this poem, which of these seemed to give him most pleasure ? 
Where is the most beautiful description ? Which lines would make 
the best pictures ? Why does Emerson call the bee wise ? What 
lines of the poem are apart from his personal experience ? Explain 
the last two lines. Why would the metre of the Snow-Storm have 
been inappropriate to this subject ? 

FORBEARANCE. 

Emerson had little sympathy with a purely scientific knowledge of 
nature. He says, in Blight : — 

"But these young scholars who invade our hills, 
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, 
And traveling often in the cut he makes, 
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, 
And all their botany is Latin names." 

3. Daniel i. 8-14. 

Is a man likely to be a better naturalist because he is a good sports- 
man ? What pleasures has the one addressed in the poem given up ? 



116 NOTES. 

Does he receive any compensation? What is '^high behavior"? 
What kind of ideals lead to it ? What kind of speech is meant in line 
6 ? Does Emerson mean that he would not express his appreciation ? 
What qualities does he desire in a friend ? 

THE RHODORA. 

Describe the home of the rhodora. Why does Emerson describe 
the place before the flov^er ? Which seems to have been first in his 
mind, the picture or the moral ? Is the moral contained in lines 9-12, 
or 13-16 ? Why is beauty " its own excuse for being " ? Does Emer- 
son suggest that the rhodora's beauty is of any use ? Can beauty of 
any kind be wasted ? What do you mean by a thing's being wasted ? 

EACH AND ALL. 

Emerson's belief that "all are needed by each one," he carried into 
the world of human beings as well as that of nature. He himself said 
that much of the best society he had ever known was in a club at 
Concord called the Social Circle, consisting always of twenty-five 
citizens, — doctor, lawyer, farmer, trader, miller, mechanic, etc., solid- 
est of men, who yielded the solidest of gospel. His son says that 
Emerson always liked to speak with the fishermen, wood-choppers, 
and drivers of cattle whom he met on his walks. He never took an 
attitude of superiority. The story is told of a working woman who 
admitted that she did not understand his lectures. "But," she said, 
"I like to go and see him stand up there and look as if he thought 
every one was as good as he was." In this Emerson is like Whittier, 
who, Mrs. Field says, liked nothing better than going into " the store " 
at Amesbury, and sitting on a barrel to hear " folks talk." 

32. Choir : a company moving rhythmically. 

In what part of a poem is the main thought usually placed ? Is 
Emerson careful to follow the custom ? Which two lines give the 
main thought of this poem ? Which of these two do lines 1-10 illus- 
trate ? In how many ways ? Is there any climax in these illustra- 
tions ? What are Emerson's three illustrations of the second line of the 
main thought ? Is there any special arrangement of the objects enum- 
erated in lines 40-47 ? In lines 1-36, why has he found beauty decep- 
tive ? In lines 37-39, does he mean that truth is opposed to beauty ? 
(Cf. line 12.) Is it beauty, or his interpretation of beauty, that has 



liOTES, 117 

deceived him ? Can one person see all the beauty in a landscape ? 
Why ? Can one person see all the truth on any subject ? Would 
Emerson's reasoning in line 12 apply to truth ? What happens if we 
give up trying to see more truth ? (Cf. Self-Bel iance, 26, sentence 2 ; 
also Matthew xxv. 29.) What lines seem to you best worth remem- 
bering ? 

FORERUNNERS. 

An exquisite little poem, expressing metaphorically the thought 
that even if perfection is unattainable, the nearer one comes to it, the 
more perfect is one's possession of the "peace that hallows rudest 
ways." Do not try to interpret the metaphors literally. 

4. Leaguer : camp. 

36. Laughter: here, as also in the World-Soul, 102, Emerson 
thinks of laughter as a mark of joy, rather than of amusement. He 
says in his journal, "The wise are always cheerful " ; but he had no 
sympathy with the " loud laugh that shows the vacant mind." 

Note the words used in an unusual manner ; the comparisons ; the 
musical lines ; the delicacy of the traces left by the "happy guides." 
Comparing this poem with the Humhle-Bee, in which are color, sound, 
fragrance, more distinct ? Why ? In line 3, what is the subject of 
breaks f What are the associations with the harp (line 36) ? Why 
compare this laughter to the harp, rather than to the flute or the piano ? 
Is any part of this poem literal ? 



WOODNOTES. 

This description of the "forest seer" applies so well to Emerson's 
friend Thoreau that it has often, but erroneously, been thought to 
picture him. Much of it was written before Emerson knew Thoreau, 
and seems to be a kind of presaging of the friend to come. See 
biographical sketch of Thoreau in Emerson's works (Riverside edi- 
tion, Vol. X., page 421). 

1-12. Even this slight and almost conventional touch of repining is 
omitted in later editions. 

30. Fantastic : unreal. 

35. Thoreau talks of the " mysteries of the number six." 

63. Haps : happening upon what he most wished to see. 

101. Event : result. 

130. Public : belonging to all nature. 



118 NOTES. 



1. 

Lines 13-16 : cf. Forbearance, lines 1-2, Line 22 : is the poet 
glad because of this, or does he repine ? Line 35 : illustrate nature's 
use of the number five and the star-form. Lines 40-42 : how does 
Emerson's thought suddenly broaden ? Cf. Each and All, lines 9-10. 

2. 

How was this lover of nature a "seer"? What is the "natural 
year"? What is the derivation of harbinger 9 What "spheres" 
are meant ? Why are they coupled with tides in Emerson's thought ? 
Can one know nature if he does not love her ? Can you understand a 
person whom you dislike ? Why? In line 58, what does and connect ? 
What is meant by " its long-descended race " ? 



Line 82 : from whom does the Linnrea take its name ? Who is the 
"man of flowers" ? Lines 89-93 : explain |)?a;i^, living towers, green 
tents. How were the tents "by eldest Nature dressed"? Line 97 : 
how could his " great heart" make him a hermit ? Why did he not 
need to ask his way? Cf. line 105; also Self-Beliance, 39, "The 
wise man," etc. 

4. 

From the change of metre do you expect a lighter or a more serious 
theme ? Line 117 : why is the peasant " lowly great" ? Line 123 : 
why does Emerson call the shadows "proud"? How has he shown 
his knowledge of nature and his sympathy with her ? What irregu- 
larities of metre do you notice ? Are they a blemish ? What is the 
moral of this poem ? 

THE WORLD-SOUL. 

Emerson thinks of the world as possessing a soul, and as being cap- 
able of good and of evil. Over the world is its guardian spirit, or 
daemon, that will lead it to final good. In the first stanza, Emerson 
hopes for good from the analogy of nature ; in the second and third, 
he pictures the evil in the world ; in stanzas 4-8, the nearness of good ; 
in 6-10, the certainty that good will triumph. 

3. Emerson makes many references to New Hampshire. He liked 
to use tools that lay at hand, and he valued especially the view of 



NOTES. 119 

Mount Monadnock that could be had from Concord. It was to 
the White Mountains that he went when the most difficult decision 
of his life was to be made. See Cabot's Memoir of Emerson^ 
page 155. 

25. A quaint reference to the parlors of earlier New England, 
sacred to weddings, funerals, and the minister's calls. 

31-32. A marvelous phrase to come from one who "could not 
surely recognize the commonest airs." But Emerson had what he 
called "musical eyes." He believed that the same moods that mel- 
odies waken in the lovers of audible music were aroused in him by 
the beauty that he saw everywhere in nature. As he put it, "That 
which others hear, I see." 

40. Intervals : spaces. Cf. Compensation, 13, 14. 

41. Sprite : spirit, i.e., the wish for perfection. 

48. Spell: as used by Milton, — to learn the meaning of anything 
by study. 

78. Roses and a shroud : gifts of life and of death. Cf. quota- 
tion from Caliph Ali in Self-Beliance, 49. 

84. The genius, with Emerson, is he who can interpret truth. 

89-96. The Spirit of final good, whose viceroy is Love without 
weakness, appreciates and saves all that is good. 

92. Emerson's favorite idea of laying aside the past and making a 
fresh beginning. See second note to Compensation, 48. 

105. Emerson says that a walk in the woods is " one of the secrets 
for dodging old age." 

Why is Emerson grateful to the light, sea, uplands, etc.? What 
does he learn from women ? (Cf. Self- Reliance, 20.) What does he 
learn from boys? (Cf. Self-Beliance, 5.) In line 13, what is the 
antecedent of " it" ? What is the prose order of lines 14, 15 ? What 
does Emerson wish to keep pace with the new inventions ? (Line 20 ; 
cf. Hymn, line 4.) Explain "the shot heard round the world." 
Was its meaning any more " clear" than the shots of the Civil War? 
What is the original meaning of angel? Why should music "'dis- 
dain" mortals ? Do we generally use the word inevitable of pleasant 
or of unpleasant things ? Why does Emerson speak of men as being 
in a cell ? What does he mean by the " cipher " and the " secret" ? 
In line 61, what does "within, without" mean? What are the 
"eternal rings"? In lines 65-72, what comfort does he find for 
lines 9-24? Why does he speak of Thought as having a "causing 
stream"? Which are more real and powerful to Emerson's mind. 



120 NOTES. 

cities or thoughts ? What is the meaning of Dcemon ? Does line 80 
mean that we are helpless to choose our own way ? Who is the 
"viceroy " ? What Spirit, then, does Emerson think rules the world ? 
Is his belief pessimistic or optimistic? In lines 89-92, what is the 
work of Love ? Does line 91 mean that Love destroys the wrong- 
doer, or the wrong ? Give the outline of the poem. Give its main 
thought. How does this thought compare with Tennyson's : — 

" yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill." — In Memoriam:, 54. 



ENGLISH. 3 

Studies in English Composition. 

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C. Davis, Cleveland, Ohio. i2mo, cloth, 210 pages. Price, 80 cents. 

THIS book is the outgrowth of experience in teaching compo- 
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The primal idea of the book is that the pupil learns to write 
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ENGLISH. 



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In working out these ideas, care has been taken to provide 
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ENGLISH. 



Paragraph- Writing. 



By Professor F, N. ScoTT, University of Michigan, and Professor J, 
V. Denney, Ohio State University. i2mo, 304 pages. Price, ^i.oo. 

THE principles embodied in this work were developed and 
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Rlietoric needs to master and apji^ly, in order to improve the 
details of his paragraphs in unity, clearness, and force. 

Professor J. M. Hart, Cornell Utziversity : The style of the writers is admi- 
rable for clearness and correctness. . . . They have produced an uncom- 
monly sensible text-book. . . . For college work it will be hard to beat. 
I know of no other book at all comparable to it for freshman drill. 

Professor Charles Mills Gayley, University of California : Paragraph- 
Writing is the best thing of its kind, — the only systematic and exhaustive 
effort to present a cardinal feature of rhetorical training to the educational 
world. 

The Dial, March, 1894 : Paragraph- Writing is one of the really practical 
books on English composition. ... A book that successfully illustrates 
the three articles of the rhetorician's creed, — theory, example, and practice. 



ENGLISH. 



From Milton to Tennyson. 



Masterpieces of English Poetry. Edited by L. Du PONT Syle, Uni- 
versity of California. i2mo, cloth, 480 pages. Price, ^i.oo. 

IN this work the editor has endeavored to bring together within 
the compass of a moderate-sized volume as much narrative, 
descriptive, and lyric verse as a student may reasonably be re- 
quired to read critically for entrance to college. From the 
nineteen poets represented, only such masterpieces have been 
selected as are within the range of the understanding and the 
sympathy of the high school student. Each masterpiece is 
given complete, except for pedagogical reasons in the cases of 
Thomson, Cowper, Byron, and Browning. Exigencies of space 
have compelled the editor reluctantly to omit Scott from this 
volume. The copyright laws, of course, exclude American poets 
from the scope of this work. 

The following poets are represented : — 

MILTON, by the L' Allegro, II Penseroso, Lycidas, and a Selection from the Sonnets. 

DRYDEN . . Epistle to Congreve, Alexander's Feast, Character of a Good Parson. 

POPE .... Epistles to Mr. Jervas, to Lord BLirlington, and to Augustus. 

THOMSON . . Winter. 

JOHNSON . . Vanky of Human Wishes. 

GRAY .... Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, and The Bard. 

GOLDSMITH . Deserted Village. 

CO'WPER . . Winter Morning's Walk. 

BURNS . . . Cotter's Saturday Night, Tam O'Shanter, and a Selection t'rom the 

Songs. 
COLERIDGE . Ancient Mariner. 
BYRON . . . Isles of Greece, and Selections from Childe Harold, Manfred, and 

the Hebrew Melodies. 
KEATS . . . Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale, Sonnet on Chapman's 

Homer. 
SHELLEY . . Euganean Hills, The Cloud, The Skylark, and the Two Sonnets 

on the Nile. 
WORDSWORTH Laodamia, The Highland Girl, Tintern Abbey, The Cuckoo, The 

Ode to a Skylark, The Milton Sonnet, The Ode to Duty, and 

the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. 
MACAULAY . Horatius. 
CLOUGH . . . Two Ships, the Prologue to the Mari Magno, and the Lawyer's 

First Tale. 
ARNOLD . . The Scholar-Gypsy and the Forsaken Merman. 
BROWNING . Transcript from Euripides (Balaiistion's Adventure). 
TENNYSON . Okione, Morte D'Arthur, The Miller's Daughter, and a Selection 

from the Songs. 



LIBRARY 




